<March 20, 2256>
<2200 Hours>
<Cochrane Hall, Room 225>

Pushing aside my copy of Advanced Starship Tactics, I pulled out a smaller more colored book titled "Jayne's Fighting Starships, Klingon Empire Volume One" and flipped through to the bookmarked page. There I continued my studies, pouring over the technical specifications of the Klingon D6 Class. It was a powerful, well designed ship I had to admit, with their classification two offensive/defensive disruptor beams, much heavier than any target I had fought before.

As I continued to study the specifications, and double checked with my copy of "Advanced Starship Tactics", something key began to form in the corner of my mind. The Klingon ship was powerful yes, but overall she had no more offensive power than the mainline Federation Cruisers. The real difference was in the location of the weapons, not the types. The current heavy cruiser design featured six class one offensive phaser banks, three on each side of the saucer. Coupled with the three photon torpedo launchers, the Federation Heavy Cruiser could fire weapons from any angle, thus eliminating any blind spot. The D6 however focused nearly the entirety of her weapons pointing towards the bow, which would give me the advantage overall. The first few barrages would be heavy, but once the Klingon needed to break off his attack run, I could get in behind him where he couldnt fire back.

So it all came down to maneuvers I decided after thinking through an attack plan. Tomorrow was going to be an important day, it was the third of my four simulator exercises. Most of my previous semester had been spent training for twelve scenarios, ranging from simple maneuvers to one on one duels, to objective based training, ending finally with a challenging fight against three enemy warships. That final scenario still played in my mind as it had been a difficult fight. That mission had put me in command of a heavy cruiser battling three enemy frigates. One on one, I could have blown those enemy ships out of space in no time, but three of them forced me to change my tactics. It had been an uphill battle, but I had come out of that fight with only moderate hull damage, and had destroyed two enemy ships before the third retreated.

These final tests were however designed to test a cadet's ability to function as a Captain, and had contained multiple objectives. The past two examinations had been non-combat oriented, well not entirely without combat. The second scenario had put me in contact with a rather irate Orion trader whom I had decided to attempt to reason with rather than fight. It had been a challenge, he was particularly stubborn, but my friend Ryan had been there with me. Overall I was confident that this scenario would be a combat one, since they had to test my abilities in combat before graduation right? And if it was going to be a combat scenario I must study for it. Since the Klingons were the primary enemy Starfleet was training me to fight, I was confident that any real combat scenario would be against them. On that note, I brought my thoughts back to coming up with a plan of attack against the best ship the Klingons could throw at me.

"Ya know, you don't have to check the schedule every five minutes," Katie said from her position lounging on her bed as she studied the dataslate in her hands, studying for a test in astrophysics. "K'endarra... it's only the end of the world if you fail, since you're wanting to go command track. What's a twenty-five year career as an ensign among friends," she asked with a smirk, giving my tail a tug.

"Aren't we the bright little ray of sunshine," I replied, twitching my tail out of her grasp. "don't pull my tail, it's not a Terran toy," I continued, rechecking the schedule for the Kobyashi Maru test. The first time slot on the first day of testing, tomorrow morning at 0800 hours. It meant I could not ask anyone else what the test scenario was going to be. Of course, we were not supposed to tell one another, in any event, what the test scenario was. But, some cheating could always be expected on these kinds of things. But, I would be denied that avenue of information now since I was first.

"I hate going very first... how am I supposed to use my feminine whiles to wheedle information out of another cadet now," I demanded in a slightly petulant tone, making a pouty face at Katie.

"You're not half as sexy as you think you are," my roommate replied with a chuckle.

We’d been itching about the test from the first day of the new term. We knew what to expect, and yet at the same time we felt completely unprepared. A no-win scenario that involved rescuing someone by putting yourself in danger seemed simple enough on paper, but the words “no-win” never sat well with a cocky, young, wet-behind-the-ears fourth-year cadet.

And so, the group of us sat in one of the garden spots on the academy grounds, discussing our joint fates to take the test and wondering what we’d do in any given situation.

There was myself, of course, tall and striking; classically handsome facial features, a strong muscular body and a glint in my eye that sent the ladies swooning every time I glanced their way.

Or at least, that’s how I remember myself.

In reality I was a bit gangly before I’d begun to put on a little muscle, and if you’d heard my wife tell it, she fell in love with me for my sense of humor.

There was Vanda, at the time just my fiancé, still a young and vibrant native of Andor. Her white hair was cut short almost like a pixie, her blue skin glowing like Earth’s sky, a figure that made most human girls green with envy and her eyes seemed to stare right through someone when she was focusing her attention on them. Her lips were pursed in thought as she leaned against a tree, thumbing through a padd of tactical data.

Her roommate was a freckle-faced, red-haired, green-eyed girl named Rachel O’Bannon who looked and sounded as if she was fresh off the Emerald Isle. To match the Irish looks, she had a wicked Irish temper, which often caused her accent to become even more pronounced when she was agitated; but she was the best hand-to-hand fighter in the group.

Sitting next to Rachel were the two Evil Twins: Ken and Ben Hoffstead. Identical in every way—a claim, Vanda often teased, they would be happy to prove to her, much to my annoyance—and the best pilot and navigation team I’d ever seen. Each sported a head of sandy blonde hair and a slightly beaked nose. Their brown eyes took in everything and darted around like a bird’s. They were both from Mars originally, but claimed to have “risen above the other little green men.”

In deep discussion next to me were two of our resident tinkerers: Jack Hanson and Robert Devenshire; both native Earthers and two guys who really knew their way around a warp coil. Their current feud was over how to increase engine efficiency without destroying the ship and it was involving several animated hand movements that were causing most of us to sway back and forth to avoid them.

Lastly, sitting ramrod straight on a stone bench was my roommate, a Vulcan male named T’son. He was cool, calm, collected and utterly unflappable. He was a shoe-in for the science track; he could rattle off the name of every documented anomaly in Federation space purely from memory and could give you a detailed description of each of their characteristics. It was this attention to detail that we were praying would give us some clue as to how to beat the game.

Because that’s what it was to us back then: it was a game. It wasn’t real life, even though we knew we had to take it as seriously as if it were.