Front and Center - Part 1

Cormus had been running the simulations for three days before he said anything to anyone about it.

He had not told Zedd he was doing it and he had not told Mei-Lin and he had definitely not told Lindsy, partly because he did not want to make a thing of it before he knew what the thing was and partly because he had a reasonable amount of pride and wanted to at least give himself a fair shot before he started drawing conclusions.

The holodeck on Deck 4 was small and the simulation library that came with the Dutchman was not extensive but it had enough to work with. He had pulled the Saber class helm profiles and built out a series of scenarios that ranged from routine transit to the kind of situations the Dutchman was probably going to find herself in based on the contracts Zedd had been describing. Evasive maneuvers under fire. Emergency course corrections in debris fields. High warp transit through gravitational variance. The kind of flying that required a feel for a ship at a scale he had not operated before.

The first day he had done reasonably well and come out of it feeling like maybe he had been worrying about nothing.

The second day he had run the debris field scenario six times and gotten through it cleanly twice and he was honest enough with himself to know that two out of six was not a number he would accept from any pilot he was evaluating.

The third day he had pushed into the high warp gravitational variance scenario and the simulation had ended badly enough that he had sat in the holodeck for ten minutes afterward just thinking.

He found Lindsy in the astrometrics alcove that evening, which was where she usually was when the ship was quiet and she had something to think through. She looked up when he came in and read his expression in the way she read most things, accurately and without making him say more than he needed to.

"Simulations?" she said.

He stopped. "How did you know?"

"You have been using the holodeck at 0600 for three days," she said. "And you have been quieter than usual at the helm during the day. You get quiet when you are comparing something."

He sat down on the bench along the wall and stretched his legs out and looked at the star charts rotating above the projector for a moment. "It is harder than I thought," he said. "Flying her. The Dutchman. At this scale, in the scenarios we are actually likely to face." He paused. "I can do it. I want to be clear about that. I can get us through most of what I ran. But most is not the standard I want to operate at and I think we both know I am not the best person for that seat."

Lindsy was quiet for a moment in the way she was quiet when she was being careful about what she said next. "What did you run?"

"Debris field transit under fire. High warp gravitational variance. Emergency course corrections at full impulse in a contested approach." He looked at her. "Two out of six on the debris field. The variance scenario ended the simulation."

She nodded slowly. "Those are not easy scenarios."

"They are not supposed to be easy," he said. "They are supposed to be the job." He looked at the star charts. "You have eight years of deep range navigation. You have plotted courses through conditions I have never seen from a cockpit and you understand how a ship moves through space at a level that is different from what I do. I fly small craft. I fly them very well. That is where I should be."

Lindsy looked at him for a long moment. "You do not have to do this."

"I know I don't have to," he said. "That's not why I'm doing it." He looked at her directly. "You would be better in that seat than I am and the ship would be safer for it and that is the only thing that actually matters." He paused. "Besides. I have been watching you plot courses for two weeks and it is genuinely uncomfortable how good you are at it. It would be a waste to keep you in astrometrics when the ship needs you at the helm."

She held his gaze for a moment and something in her expression shifted slightly in the way it did when she had received something honestly and was deciding how to receive it. "That means something," she said quietly. "Coming from you."

"It should," he said, without any particular ego in it. "I know what good flying looks like. What you do with navigation is the same thing at a different scale and I am not too proud to say so." He paused and the corner of his mouth moved. "Don't make it weird though."

She laughed at that, quietly and genuinely, and the tension in the room dropped to something considerably more comfortable. "Alright," she said.

"Alright you'll do it or alright you'll think about it?"

"Alright I'll do it," she said. "If Zedd agrees."

"He'll agree," Cormus said, with the easy confidence of someone who had already worked through the conversation in his head. "Come with me when I talk to him. It will go faster if you are there."

She looked at him for a moment. "Cormus."

"Yeah."

"What you just did took more than most people have," she said. "Putting the ship first like that. It's not a small thing."

He looked at her for a second and then shrugged in the way he shrugged when something landed that he had not prepared a response for. "Ship comes first," he said. "That's just how it works." He stood up and headed for the door. "Now come on before I change my mind."

She smiled and followed him out.