Part III - Simulator Testing

Posted on Wed Jan 29th, 2014 @ 12:44pm by Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke
Edited on on Wed Jan 29th, 2014 @ 11:55pm

Episode: Trauma
Location: Pike City, Cestus III
Timeline: 10 November 2390

After two weeks of leave, Horatio was burning to do something other than mope around Pike City and frequent The Brew House.

When he was at that pub, he felt miserable and tried to compensate with drink and other debauchery, usually involving the local female population. When he was at his rented one-bedroom apartment in Prescott Hill, he struggled to get out of bed before noon. He hated the apartment; too much time to allow his thoughts to overwhelm him.

You couldn’t save her!

Figuring that he needed to get back to work, he summoned the motivation to get dressed and leave his apartment and went back to Fleet HQ thinking he might as well get the damned rehabilitation over and done with.

The personnel office must have been busy because he had to wait almost thirty minutes before he was called in to talk with a smug looking lieutenant commander who looked like he’d been in the rank longer than Horatio had been in the uniform.

Lieutenant Commander Too Old informed him that he would have to be passed ready for active space service by one of the fleet counselors and an initial appointment had been made for him for one week thence. “In the meantime,” Too Old said, “you will be employed in light duties here in Pike City.”

Horatio had grumbled at him, but managed to resist the urge to throw the PADD he was handed back at his smug face. Instead, he went back to his apartment, via The Brew House.

As it turned out, the light shore duties was something he would usually have enjoyed. They sent him to the Academy Campus to be a test pilot on the new Shuttlecraft Flight Training Simulator.

The assignment would last one day.

The simulator cockpit was the same as a Type-6 shuttlecraft. In fact, Horatio was pretty sure when he first sat in the pilot’s seat he was sitting in a re-purposed decommissioned Type-6. It was just like the one he had flown to Coronado and just like the one …

You couldn’t save her!

The simulator was meant for first year cadets to introduce them to a shuttle’s cockpit and give them a basic understanding of flight control. These would only be used by freshmen, with the senior levels advancing into holosuite training programs and finally onto the real thing. Horatio's job today was to run through the training regimen and provide feedback on what he thought worked well, what didn’t, what could be improved and give advice on what he thought was missing.

The programs were so basic that Horatio could have performed them in his sleep. Once he was performing a standard orbital shift manoeuvre but his mind was elsewhere. He tried to focus, but his mind wouldn’t let him. It kept dragging him back to Ollara IV … back to that day …

He ended up crashing the shuttle just to see what would happen. To see what it was like to crash … again … He felt nothing. But her scream sounded so real.

“Is everything okay, Lieutenant?”

He slowly turned his head and his eyes refocused on the intense face of Commander Mitcham, the simulation instructor. “Sorry, sir?” he asked, mentally shaking himself.

“I asked if everything was alright,” Mitcham repeated, raising an eyebrow which reinforced her stereotypical teacher visage.

Horatio swallowed and looked around the cockpit. He was struggling to remember the last simulation he ran. Was it shuttlebay landing procedures? Aerobraking? He couldn’t remember.

“No. This regimen is too basic,” he said with an aggressive tone. “What are we expecting them to learn about shuttle operations if we make them do milk runs?”

Mitcham cocked her head slightly, clearly irritated by Horatio’s tone. She remained calm as she replied, “They’re first year cadets, Lieutenant,” she said. “Most of them have never sat in a pilot’s seat before.”

Horatio stood up and walked past Mitcham and out the back of the simulator, speaking as he went. “They need to know what they’re doing when they get in that seat,” he said, turning at the exit to see the Commander following him. He felt his breathing get faster as he felt adrenaline pumping. “They need to know that there are real consequences to their decisions when they’re in that seat. That people die!”

“They will, Lieutenant,” Mitcham said, emphasising his subordinate rank. “But that’s for a later time, we don’t want to be –”

“You’re not listening to me!” Horatio’s voice was rising now and he could feel his heart beat in his ears. Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Ba-boom! It was a rage he hadn’t felt before, but this know-it-all desk jockey was trying to tell him how to suck eggs. She reminded him of Captain Bar’eth, who wouldn’t listen when he told him that attacking the Tzenkethi base was a seriously bad idea.

“If they’re not prepared early, if they don’t know the risks, then why the hell would we keep training them? People die all the time. A good pilot can save them. If they make mistakes, people die!”

You couldn’t save her!

Mitcham was about to say something, but Horatio cut her off, taking an aggressive step toward her. He didn’t think he would hit her. Would he?

“Just listen to me!” he shouted. Why can’t this moron understand? “You have to prepare them. Attacking that base is pointless! People will die! Just listen to me! I need you to please, just listen and just … listen!”

He was screaming louder now and everyone on the simulator floor was watching him, not knowing what to do. Every one of them stunned into silence except one person.

“Lieutenant!” the voice carried with it heavy authority and Horatio clenched his jaw shut until his teeth hurt. Commodore Robert Peterson had the sort of harsh features and air of authority that brokered absolutely no arguments. So when he added, “Wait in my office, Mister Hawke!” there was no way he was able to ignore it.

One of the commodore’s assistants following Horatio all the way up two levels and across three buildings to the Dean of First Year Students’ office. Horatio waited inside, calming down. He was at the point where he realised what he had done – but not why – when the commodore entered.

He was expecting to cop a force five dressing down and he gritted his teeth in preparation for it. But it didn’t come.

“Have you started your psychiatric evaluations yet?” Peterson asked after closing the door behind him. He was calm, even gentle, and sounded more like a concerned mentor than a furious superior. Which really threw Horatio because he’d never even met the man.

“No, sir,” Horatio replied, almost brushing the question aside. He quickly jumped to the defence he was convinced he would have to mount under hostile fire. “I’m sorry about what happened in there, sir,” he said. “I just … I didn’t think I was getting through to Commander Mitch –” the commodore silenced him with a single raised hand.

“Lieutenant, I’m not sure you were even aware of what you were doing in there,” he said.

Horatio bowed his head and looked at the carpet. An intense sense of shame inundated his mind raising up the anger, the hopelessness, the grief. He sucked in a deep breath, which shuddered as it went.

You couldn’t save her.

“I’m taking you off active duty again,” Peterson said, “and requesting that Starfleet Medical accelerate your assessment. You’re not ready yet, son.”

Horatio raised his head and was about to protest, but two things stopped him. The first was the commodore’s eyes that struck the kind of fear into his heart he knew every freshman cadet on Cestus III shared. The second was the growing feeling, deep in his gut, that the commodore was right.

“I don’t know you, Lieutenant,” Peterson continued. “I’ve never heard anything about you until just now. But I do know trauma when I see it. I know that look in your eyes; I’ve seen it in the eyes of men and women I’ve served with over thirty years.”

He put his hand on Horatio’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Don’t think you can get through this on your own. You need some help.”

The commodore made sense … at first.

Horatio left the Academy Annexe and caught a cab back to his apartment. During the ride he found himself questioning what Peterson had said. The further he got from the Academy, the less the commodore’s words seemed to make sense.

What the hell would he know? He said himself that he doesn’t know me! He’s an angry old failed captain with a grudge. Forget what he says.

He stepped out of the cab in front of his apartment building and stood outside staring up at the ten storey building in front of him. His neck craned upwards, looking at the roof. How far is that?

His eyes stung, so he wiped them and realised that they were teary. He briefly wondered why, but just as soon ignored it.

He pulled the commbadge from his chest and held it in his hand for a moment, gazing down at it with intense eyes. It was a symbol. A symbol of all he had achieved in Starfleet. Of all that millions of others had achieved across the centuries. It symbolised duty, responsibility and fraternity with your fellow officers. It symbolised the unity of the United Federation of Planets. But it also symbolised death. It symbolised destruction. It symbolised losing your legs. It symbolised losing your love.

You couldn’t save her!

The anger came flooding back. He grimaced as he closed his hand around the badge and squeezed it tight, feeling the edges dig into the skin of his palm. He held it there for a few minutes, feeling trickles of blood escape his hand and drip to the pavement below.

He opened his palm and looked down, his own blood now smearing the badge. He stared at it for what might have been a minute, or ten. Then in one final, brutal motion he threw it into the garden bed next to the building’s entrance and stormed inside.

Her blood is on your hands!