Fic: Introduction to Love and War (STXI, gen or K/S)
Title: Introduction to Love and War
Fandom: STXI, with allusions to TMP and TNG
Pairing: Gen with background K/S
Rating: G
Word Count: ~1300
Summary: Spock teaches a tactics class and remembers Jim Kirk. Inspired by this prompt on the kink meme.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
I was both thrilled and utterly terrified to learn that I'd made the Introduction to Tactics seminar with Captain Spock. At the time I was a young science major toying with the idea of switching into command, and the idea of being in a class full of competitive, domineering personalities was intimidating enough without the need to impress a man of Spock's reputation being thrown into the mix. Still, the chance to be taught by the legendary half-Vulcan programmer of the Kobayashi Maru was not something one turned down.
Tuesday 1400 hours found me sitting in Lincoln 151, hair neatly combed and wearing my crispest uniform. A small huddle of command cadets was standing to one side chatting, and, feeling slightly out of place, I pretended to flip through a padd while listening to their conversation.
"I spoke to his yeoman. She said we won't need the textbooks."
"My uncle had him once in Xenoling. Said he was real tough -- gives out B minuses and everything."
"That was before, though. I hear he's gotten soft."
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, apparently he's not as scary as he was when he first came back to the Academy like ten, fifteen years ago. The simulations are less brutal, too, at least in the Intro class."
"And he programs them himself."
"Yeah, to make them trickier. But he actually likes it when you beat them."
"Yeah, I've heard the same. Jean-Luc said he practically smiled at him once."
"Jean-Luc is mad."
"Only a little bit."
This was all news to me. I was familiar with Spock's scientific career, of course -- his ideas on biophysics were revolutionary, and the academic community had gone wild when he'd published his Six Problems with the Tor-Weber Theory of Everything. But I knew very little, aside from the obvious, of his active duty days on board the Enterprise. The idea of an unorthodox, possibly-smiling Vulcan was completely at odds with the dignified image of him I'd formed from his cerebral research and the grave diplomatic speeches I'd heard on the FNN.
Captain Spock entered the classroom just then, and the cadets dispersed and took their seats. He looked smaller, more human than he did in his official pictures. Instead of heavy ambassadorial robes, he was straight and spare in the red Starfleet uniform, and his hair was just beginning to go grey. He wasn't smiling, though. Not yet.
Instead he folded himself gracefully into his seat and looked briefly round at the ten cadets in the room. I knew that Vulcans are touch telepaths, of course, but it felt like he was reading my mind anyway. I sat up straighter and hoped to god that my thoughts hadn't seemed too inane. Then he spoke, addressing the class in a deep voice. Just one word.
"Romulans."
My heart sank. The assigned readings had said next to nothing about Romulans. Evidently the cadet had been right about the textbooks.
Across the table from me a blonde-haired cadet raised her hand. "Mr Hansen," the captain acknowledged.
"Sir," Hansen said crisply. "Romulus is a martial and hierarchical society, with political power controlled by the office of the Praetor, the Senate, and the military police or Tal Shiar. Since First Contact they've been engaged in periodic altercations with the Federation, mostly because of their isolationist and expansionist policies. Technologically they're on par with or maybe even superior to the Federation, and although they're intelligent, they're also given to aggression and tend to favour confrontation over diplomacy."
"Motivations?" Spock asked. His tone was unreadable.
"Uh," Hansen said, "Conquest is motivated more by familial, racial and national pride than by desire for material gain. Power is prized for its own sake. And personal and clan honour are prized too, which probably accounts for the strong impulses towards violence and revenge."
"A very correct answer, cadet," Spock said. But somehow it didn't exactly sound like praise. Hansen frowned and looked at the table. There was a silence. Then, "What of Sarila T'Reyan?" Spock asked.
An acquaintance of mine, Matt Greenwood, spoke up. "She was captain of a damaged scout ship picked up by the Mallory in 2316. The Romulans sent two warbirds to retrieve her. In the end they succeeded, but they lost one ship and there were heavy casualties on both sides. The Mallory lost twenty men, including her First Officer."
"Motivation?" Spock asked again.
Matt glanced at Hansen, then shrugged. "Romulans will do anything to avoid capture. Their honour --"
"-- would have been satisfied by her suicide," Spock said bluntly. "That is the Romulan way."
"The Dri was found close to Federation space. Maybe they were spying and had valuable information?" another cadet suggested.
"Doubtful," Spock returned. "There was no indication of such in the Dri's databanks. Besides, it was T'Reyan who was the object of the rescue mission, and not the ship itself."
Another silence.
At length, Spock said, "The Narada. Motivation." He sat back, raising an expectant eyebrow.
We looked round at each other uncomfortably. The 'correct' answers were obvious -- honour, a sense of betrayal, revenge. But it was clear those weren't the responses the captain was looking for. And no one was keen to engage in wild speculation over the disaster in front of a man who had actually been there, and who had watched his planet be destroyed.
Finally the Tellarite next to me snorted impatiently, and said, slightly sarcastically, "Well if it wasn't power and revenge and all the usual stuff, maybe it was just because Nero was barking mad?"
There was a collective wince -- we were all sure that our classmate was going to find out at very unpleasant firsthand what happened when you tried to smartmouth a Vulcan. But Spock turned to him with an unexpected gleam of approval in his eyes, and nodded slowly.
"Interesting, Mr Grak," he said. "Would you care to elaborate?"
"Yeah, sure," said Grak, looking slightly wrongfooted. "He was mad, wasn't he? Twenty-five years sitting around in space with nothing to do but wait while his wounds festered. It'd drive anyone up the wall."
"You mean he acted out of emotion?" I interrupted, surprising myself. I had not intended to speak. Captain Spock looked directly at me, and to my even greater surprise, I thought I detected the beginnings of a smile.
"What do you think, cadet?"
I thought quickly, trying to be as logical as I could. "I know we normally think of Romulans as a regimented race -- always thinking of their duty to the Praetor and adhering to a strict honour code. But Nero wasn't a normal Romulan. He wasn't even a soldier. He acted rashly, and I don't think he was thinking all that much about satisfying the Empire's honour. In fact, as far as he was concerned, the Empire had pretty much been destroyed. It had nothing to gain from his actions.
"What he did -- destruction on that scale -- it seems almost like a grand gesture. So I think he was driven by emotion. I know it's not a very strategic-sounding thing to say. But I think it was hatred, and grief, and ultimately -- " I hesitated, feeling a bit silly " -- maybe even love."
"Isn't that rather Terracentric, though?" Hansen piped up. "I mean, isn't love a Terran ideal?"
I couldn't think of a reply to that, but Captain Spock came to the rescue.
"Love, in the way in which Terrans think of it, is certainly a Terran ideal," he agreed. "But although it manifests variously in the different cultures, I submit that the feeling itself is simple, basic and universal."
"Even to Vulcans?" asked Matt with what I thought was tremendous and reckless bravery.
"Even to Vulcans," Spock said quietly. There was a contemplative pause, and then he added: "Nero was not the only starship captain to act foolishly out of love."
And with that astonishing pronouncement, he rose in one smooth movement, dismissed the class, and swept out of the door.
Fandom: STXI, with allusions to TMP and TNG
Pairing: Gen with background K/S
Rating: G
Word Count: ~1300
Summary: Spock teaches a tactics class and remembers Jim Kirk. Inspired by this prompt on the kink meme.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
I was both thrilled and utterly terrified to learn that I'd made the Introduction to Tactics seminar with Captain Spock. At the time I was a young science major toying with the idea of switching into command, and the idea of being in a class full of competitive, domineering personalities was intimidating enough without the need to impress a man of Spock's reputation being thrown into the mix. Still, the chance to be taught by the legendary half-Vulcan programmer of the Kobayashi Maru was not something one turned down.
Tuesday 1400 hours found me sitting in Lincoln 151, hair neatly combed and wearing my crispest uniform. A small huddle of command cadets was standing to one side chatting, and, feeling slightly out of place, I pretended to flip through a padd while listening to their conversation.
"I spoke to his yeoman. She said we won't need the textbooks."
"My uncle had him once in Xenoling. Said he was real tough -- gives out B minuses and everything."
"That was before, though. I hear he's gotten soft."
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, apparently he's not as scary as he was when he first came back to the Academy like ten, fifteen years ago. The simulations are less brutal, too, at least in the Intro class."
"And he programs them himself."
"Yeah, to make them trickier. But he actually likes it when you beat them."
"Yeah, I've heard the same. Jean-Luc said he practically smiled at him once."
"Jean-Luc is mad."
"Only a little bit."
This was all news to me. I was familiar with Spock's scientific career, of course -- his ideas on biophysics were revolutionary, and the academic community had gone wild when he'd published his Six Problems with the Tor-Weber Theory of Everything. But I knew very little, aside from the obvious, of his active duty days on board the Enterprise. The idea of an unorthodox, possibly-smiling Vulcan was completely at odds with the dignified image of him I'd formed from his cerebral research and the grave diplomatic speeches I'd heard on the FNN.
Captain Spock entered the classroom just then, and the cadets dispersed and took their seats. He looked smaller, more human than he did in his official pictures. Instead of heavy ambassadorial robes, he was straight and spare in the red Starfleet uniform, and his hair was just beginning to go grey. He wasn't smiling, though. Not yet.
Instead he folded himself gracefully into his seat and looked briefly round at the ten cadets in the room. I knew that Vulcans are touch telepaths, of course, but it felt like he was reading my mind anyway. I sat up straighter and hoped to god that my thoughts hadn't seemed too inane. Then he spoke, addressing the class in a deep voice. Just one word.
"Romulans."
My heart sank. The assigned readings had said next to nothing about Romulans. Evidently the cadet had been right about the textbooks.
Across the table from me a blonde-haired cadet raised her hand. "Mr Hansen," the captain acknowledged.
"Sir," Hansen said crisply. "Romulus is a martial and hierarchical society, with political power controlled by the office of the Praetor, the Senate, and the military police or Tal Shiar. Since First Contact they've been engaged in periodic altercations with the Federation, mostly because of their isolationist and expansionist policies. Technologically they're on par with or maybe even superior to the Federation, and although they're intelligent, they're also given to aggression and tend to favour confrontation over diplomacy."
"Motivations?" Spock asked. His tone was unreadable.
"Uh," Hansen said, "Conquest is motivated more by familial, racial and national pride than by desire for material gain. Power is prized for its own sake. And personal and clan honour are prized too, which probably accounts for the strong impulses towards violence and revenge."
"A very correct answer, cadet," Spock said. But somehow it didn't exactly sound like praise. Hansen frowned and looked at the table. There was a silence. Then, "What of Sarila T'Reyan?" Spock asked.
An acquaintance of mine, Matt Greenwood, spoke up. "She was captain of a damaged scout ship picked up by the Mallory in 2316. The Romulans sent two warbirds to retrieve her. In the end they succeeded, but they lost one ship and there were heavy casualties on both sides. The Mallory lost twenty men, including her First Officer."
"Motivation?" Spock asked again.
Matt glanced at Hansen, then shrugged. "Romulans will do anything to avoid capture. Their honour --"
"-- would have been satisfied by her suicide," Spock said bluntly. "That is the Romulan way."
"The Dri was found close to Federation space. Maybe they were spying and had valuable information?" another cadet suggested.
"Doubtful," Spock returned. "There was no indication of such in the Dri's databanks. Besides, it was T'Reyan who was the object of the rescue mission, and not the ship itself."
Another silence.
At length, Spock said, "The Narada. Motivation." He sat back, raising an expectant eyebrow.
We looked round at each other uncomfortably. The 'correct' answers were obvious -- honour, a sense of betrayal, revenge. But it was clear those weren't the responses the captain was looking for. And no one was keen to engage in wild speculation over the disaster in front of a man who had actually been there, and who had watched his planet be destroyed.
Finally the Tellarite next to me snorted impatiently, and said, slightly sarcastically, "Well if it wasn't power and revenge and all the usual stuff, maybe it was just because Nero was barking mad?"
There was a collective wince -- we were all sure that our classmate was going to find out at very unpleasant firsthand what happened when you tried to smartmouth a Vulcan. But Spock turned to him with an unexpected gleam of approval in his eyes, and nodded slowly.
"Interesting, Mr Grak," he said. "Would you care to elaborate?"
"Yeah, sure," said Grak, looking slightly wrongfooted. "He was mad, wasn't he? Twenty-five years sitting around in space with nothing to do but wait while his wounds festered. It'd drive anyone up the wall."
"You mean he acted out of emotion?" I interrupted, surprising myself. I had not intended to speak. Captain Spock looked directly at me, and to my even greater surprise, I thought I detected the beginnings of a smile.
"What do you think, cadet?"
I thought quickly, trying to be as logical as I could. "I know we normally think of Romulans as a regimented race -- always thinking of their duty to the Praetor and adhering to a strict honour code. But Nero wasn't a normal Romulan. He wasn't even a soldier. He acted rashly, and I don't think he was thinking all that much about satisfying the Empire's honour. In fact, as far as he was concerned, the Empire had pretty much been destroyed. It had nothing to gain from his actions.
"What he did -- destruction on that scale -- it seems almost like a grand gesture. So I think he was driven by emotion. I know it's not a very strategic-sounding thing to say. But I think it was hatred, and grief, and ultimately -- " I hesitated, feeling a bit silly " -- maybe even love."
"Isn't that rather Terracentric, though?" Hansen piped up. "I mean, isn't love a Terran ideal?"
I couldn't think of a reply to that, but Captain Spock came to the rescue.
"Love, in the way in which Terrans think of it, is certainly a Terran ideal," he agreed. "But although it manifests variously in the different cultures, I submit that the feeling itself is simple, basic and universal."
"Even to Vulcans?" asked Matt with what I thought was tremendous and reckless bravery.
"Even to Vulcans," Spock said quietly. There was a contemplative pause, and then he added: "Nero was not the only starship captain to act foolishly out of love."
And with that astonishing pronouncement, he rose in one smooth movement, dismissed the class, and swept out of the door.