Read Online The Autobiography of James T. Kirk by David A. Goodman - Free Book Online

Finnegan stood up.
    “I gave no such order,” Finnegan said. “I think the day has been too much for the boy.”
    I went over it in my head. He was right; Finnegan had not ordered me to put the bag down. I had read into it.
    “What do you have to say to that?” Finney said.
    “Sir, I was mistaken, sir!” I was also starving, but Finney sent me back up to my room and told me to repack my bag and hold it until he got there. I followed the order, and about 15 minutes later, my roommates returned from lunch, followed by Finney. My roommates stood tall as Finney inspected my living space to make sure that I’d put everything back in the bag. I felt like passing out, but held on. He smiled.
    “Drop the bag, plebe.” I slowly lowered the bag to the ground, then returned to attention. “Stow your gear,” he said, and then left. As I started to put my gear away, I saw Finnegan standing in the doorway, smiling.
    It was not a good start for me.
    For the next two months we were put through a punishing regime of physical training: running with heavy packs, obstacle courses, battle simulations, survival training. The skills I had developed in my boyhood, considered primitive and unnecessary in our society, came in handy during this period: my mountain-climbing experience, my years camping with my father, and my knowledge of the Old West. Still, it was never easy, and there were always surprises.
    Plebe summer was such a whirlwind that I really didn’t get much downtime with my roommates. I never became close with the two humans, Jim Corrigan and Adam Castro; the Andorian, Thelin, was the first of his kind admitted to the academy, and did not always easily fit in. We shared the similarity that we tended to separate ourselves from the group.
    The last weekend of plebe summer we got our first pass. I was thrilled; it was going to be my first chance to see Ruth in months. We’d seen each other several times, but not since I’d begun at the academy. The night before, as I came into my room from having washed up, I was lost in thought; she was the first girlfriend I’d ever had, and as the stress of my first few weeks at the academy relieved somewhat, she dominated my mind. I was so distracted I hadn’t really noticed Castro, Corrigan, and Thelin’s furtive glances to one aother as I hopped up on my bed on the top bunk. There was a splash; I’d landed in something that wasn’t supposed to be there. I looked down and saw a soup bowl tipped over, my pants covered with thick, oily liquid.
    “What the hell is this?” I said, totally confused, as the answer walked in.
    “Atten-shun!” Finnegan said. We all leaped to our feet. In doing so, I made my situation worse as the bowl of soup followed me off the bed and spilled down my body. I now recognized the liquid as the corn chowder that had been served for lunch that day.
    “Sneaking food, are we, Jimmy Boy?”
    “No sir!” The congealed yellow liquid was dripping off me onto the floor.
    “You know the regulations about eating in your rooms,” he said. “This is a serious infraction. Twenty demerits.”
    “Yes sir!” I was furious. If a cadet got 100 demerits during his years at the academy, he was out. This man was carrying out some archaic practical joke that I couldn’t imagine had ever been funny,
ever
, and it might cost me my future.
    “Something you want to say to me, Jimmy Boy?” He was standing an inch in front of me. I held his stare.
    “No sir!”
    “Really? ’Cause you look like you want to lay one on me.” He was right. I wanted to hit him. Which is what he wanted, because then I’d be out.
    “No sir!”
    “All right, then, clean up this mess, before I give you ten more demerits,” Finnegan said as he swaggered through the doorway.
    “Sorry, Jim,” Castro said, handing me a towel. “We saw him come out of our room when we got back. He ordered us not to tell you what he’d done.”
    “If you report him,” Thelin said, “it will be a mark on