“Sulu, then. He has some training in security.” That was a slight overstatement; it was merely one of multiple disciplines Sulu had experimented with briefly in his early years in Starfleet. But it had been sufficient to let him double up as the Enterprise’s weapons officer on his first five-year tour aboard her, and to lead the occasional armed landing party. For what it was worth, Sulu’s parallel counterpart in the alternate universe of the Terran Empire had been the I.S.S. Enterprise’s security chief, implying an innate aptitude for the role.

“He’s had little contact with Doctor Janith-Lau,” Kirk went on. “And as a faculty member, Sulu is under Professor Blune’s authority, not mine.”

After a further second, Cartwright nodded curtly and resumed walking toward the Major Missions Room. “Very well. If Captain sh’Deslar agrees. And if you agree to stay the hell out of her way and mine. Focus on your own job, Jim.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He split off from the admiral at the next intersection, heading for the exit and from there to the Academy to speak to Sulu. He counted this as a win, but it was more of a compromise than he preferred.

Cartwright has a point, Kirk realized. I can’t do it all myself. I don’t need to—there are plenty of others here who know their jobs better than I do.

I need to learn to delegate. Trust in Spock and Uhura to handle the flares; trust in Sulu to handle the investigation. It’s the students who need my attention now.

“Radiation signature detected!”

Admiral Cartwright spun away from the windows overlooking San Francisco Bay. His eyes swept across the three large screens that dominated the opposite wall of the Major Missions Room, showing status graphics of the ongoing monitor effort and patrol distribution across the Sol system. Indeed, the center screen was showing a graph of a radiation signature that had become familiar to Cartwright by now.

He cursed silently. He’d been monitoring the situation for over eight hours and had just been thinking of getting dinner. He supposed he’d just have to grab a ration pack when he could.

Lieutenant Kexas, the Edoan who had called out the alert, was shuffling around the “pool table,” the double-hexagon console at the center of the room, working its controls with all three of her arms. “Confirming. It is a vacuum flare signature.”