Lessons in the Stars

Chapter 11 - The Obligatory Medal

The next couple of days passed very quickly for the five new friends. Order was quickly restored, and after reporting in with high command and the Academy staff, they slept for twelve hours straight. Benny was treated by a real doctor, and his leg was quickly fully healed.

The hardest thing they had to do during those two days was write a complete report on what had happened over the past week. They each had to write their own; Jon and Scarlett wrote extremely detailed reports and the others simply did the minimum. There was an agreement between the friends that no mention would be made of what they had learned about the General and the Daemoniums until they could decide how best to deal with this. For now, the secret stayed with them.

The remaining Daemoniums were exiled, and the friends didn't know what had happened to Belial, only that he hadn't been on the ship with the other Daemoniums. The Eridanus, having proved its continued worth, went into deep maintenance so it could be restored to full operation.

The first time they met all together after those two days was in Jon's quarters. This was just before the ceremony the high command had put together to honour their bravery in facing the Daemoniums and freeing the base.

Rogue was sitting on the desk next to Jon, who in turn faced the others. He took a deep breath, "I asked you all to come here because... Well, we need to decide what we're going to do next." He pinched the Bridge of his nose.

"I know what we're going to do next," Rogue said, "We're going to go to the ceremony, accept the medals and smile. Then we are going back to school, and we'll graduate in three months."

"But what about..?" Benny began.

Jon interrupted, "We'll deal with that later. It won't be that difficult. What we need to focus on now is getting our rankings up so we can graduate as a crew. Especially Rogue."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence," Rogue snapped, "Anyway, that isn't a problem. Our current scores barely matter. The final exams are the only really important thing, so, I can't believe I'm saying this, but we all need to study and work hard." Rogue took a deep breath.

"Will that be enough? When we left, you were at the bottom of the class, and I'm in the middle along with Sam. Jon and Scarlett are way at the top. How is this supposed to work?" Benny asked.

"We'll help each other with the different subjects. Sam, you and Scarlett need a lot of help with each other's skills, and you both help Benny. I'll work with Rogue on the whole authority thing," Jon replied, and Rogue snorted.

"Also, the fact that we did all this together will be taken into account," Rogue added.

"True," conceded Jon, "Now we have to go to the ceremony." Jon looked at Rogue, "Fix your uniform," he ordered.

"Do I have to?" She whined as she straightened her collar.

"Yes," Scarlett replied to the rhetorical question.

The five friends walked out of the room and headed towards the Assembly Hall where the ceremony would be taking place. Rogue and Jon dropped back for a second and Rogue nudged Jon's shoulder, whispering, "We need to see that vid-file."

"I know," he breathed back. They caught up to the others and hurried to the ceremony. They all paused at the huge wooden doors. Rogue smiled and pushed open the doors. "Smile." Jon reminded the others. They walked up the aisle. Hundreds of cheering Starfleet officers and soldiers lining the two sides. There were white and red flags, the colour of Orion, flying from the ceiling and white and red flowers lining the walls and the aisle. They reached the stage and climbed the stairs, stopping in line before General Hash. They came to attention and saluted.