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Jim Kirk enters the Nexus in a mild daze, still a little stunned at the news he's just received from Command. He doesn't look like he's shaved for a few weeks, but his black Starfleet Academy instructor's uniform is clean and his hair is neatly combed, so it's not like he's been letting himself go or anything.

He gets a cup of coffee on autopilot, before finding a seat to really think over what the hell just happened, a look of hopeful disbelief on his face, like he's been told something that's too good to be true.

"Have you ever had a dream job you never expected to get?" he asks after several minutes, looking up. "For those that haven't, if you knew you wouldn't be home for a couple years, what would you not leave without?"

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Shade-Seeker chuckles. "They are in less of a position to do so. I am not the greatest master of any art but one, and that one is not held high, but I have proven to be multidisciplinarian enough to stand farther forward in the current crisis than any of my critics dare. As one philosopher put it, 'I do not fear the knife in my back, for those who would place it must approach me first.'"

"That's an interesting saying," Jim muses, turning that thought over in his mind a couple times. "Earth's got an old saying that's sort of the opposite. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' Most people interpret that to mean you should keep an eye on them, so their movements don't surprise you, but it does seem like that's a good way to get backstabbed. Or frontstabbed."

"Our worlds have that saying in common," Shade-Seeker muses. "It is a balanced risk, to be sure, and I cannot say it has no merit. Where would you prefer to keep your enemies? Close? Or distant?"

Jim's actual first thought is 'I'd rather my enemies just be dead,' but that isn't really in the spirit of the conversation, so he pushes that answer aside and reaches for a different one. "I guess that depends on whether or not you even know who your enemy is. A traitor can do a lot of damage from the inside if you don't see it coming." Unfortunately, he speaks from personal experience there.

Shade-Seeker nods soberly. "This, I know too well. But the perfect defense against traitors... that is a lonely way, indeed, and the cost is crucially high."

Absolutely no argument from Jim. "Next best thing is safety in numbers... surround yourself with enough allies, and you've got all the more people to come to your defense. It's not perfect, but it's better than trying to go it alone."

That prompts another nod, this one firm agreement. "Far better to have friends. And in truth, Perfect Defenses are a puzzle taught to some mages when they are apprentices--not true spells, but exercises of the mind for weighing cost and consequence."

Oh, this time he can almost hear the capital letters on 'Perfect Defenses,' now that he knows it's an actual thing and not just an apt descriptor. "So it's a type of training for critical thinking? Learning to find the balance between ethics and logic, that sort of thing."

"Indeed. Or in their case, the balance between what is gained and what is lost--to defend perfectly against one form of attack is to become more vulnerable in other ways, and some Perfect Defenses directly contradict."

"That sounds really interesting," Jim says, completely honest. "Any chance you could get me some reading material? I'm teaching a Tactics course at the Academy right now, while I'm waiting for the Enterprise to finish her repairs. Something like that would be right up my alley."

"Certainly. I have not such a book with me at present, but I shall bring one on my next visit for you," he promises. "How are you liking the chance to teach?"

A friendship founded on books certainly isn't a bad kind of friendship to have, and Jim nods in agreement. They're already off to such a good start.

"It's not as bad as I thought it would be," he admits. There'd certainly been a significant amount of self-doubt, before he'd started. "I did have to devote a class to 'ask Captain Kirk tons of questions' to get that all out of the way, but everyone seems pretty engaged and eager to learn. I don't know if it's because of who I am or because of the subject matter, but if it means they're learning, I guess it doesn't matter."

Shade-Seeker might call a friendship founded on books one of the best sorts of friendship, but he has a definite pro-book bias.

"Perhaps I should try that, when I teach--a session of open questions at the outset. Every assertion must establish credence, after all. If I may ask, what manner of tactics do you teach?"

Jim is totally comfortable with answering Shade-Seeker's questions, at least about Academy training. "Mostly starship-based combat," he explains. "It's more than just the technical specs of each ship, it's also knowing and understanding the psychology of your opponent and how they're likely to react, and how to counter an opponent doing the same to you. It's mostly for cadets in the command track, but it's open to the other divisions too. And if I get time at the end of the semester, I'm hoping to do a short study on how to adapt the techniques they've learned to hand-to-hand and diplomacy."

"The School of the Tightening Circles," the scholar muses, nodding a little. "A fine lesson plan; I hope you have the opportunity to expand the study as you intend."

"School of the Tightening Circles?" Jim repeats curiously. "Is that some kind of interdisciplinary thing?"

"It is a philosophy for preparing to deal with an enemy--different tactics are called for, the nearer the enemy draws. The method which is effective at long range is less so as they approach, and so methods of attack and defense must be changed to adapt, yes?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean now," Jim says with a nod. "The closer you are, the less options you tend to have, so up-close combat needs even more prep than being at range." Tightening circles indeed.

Shade-Seeker nods. "By the same token, one who can dispatch foes at a distance may not need great skill in close quarters... until they do."

"'Better to have and not need than to need and not have,'" Jim agrees. "Starfleet generally does a good job of prepping cadets for all kinds of emergencies, but it never hurts to have extra tools in your arsenal, either."

"Ha!" Shade-Seeker laughs. "My philosophy exactly! And the tool which one has may be turned to unexpected purpose, while the tool which one has not can do very little, indeed."

"Exactly. Creative thinking might be the most powerful weapon a person can have, and it's something Starfleet's kinda lost focus on. Even if the only thing that cadets learn from my lectures is how to use what they have creatively, then I've done my job."

"I am curious--I know little of sailing, and less of these star-ships, but how may one fight creatively with one?"

Jim smiles a little, more than fine with elaborating on the idea. "The most basic thing about starship combat that a lot of species forget is that you're operating in three dimensions, not two. Unless a species evolved to fly, most people we've met tend to favor flat, horizontal planes of movement. A starship can move in any direction, and come at an enemy vessel from an unexpected angle."

"There's also a tendency to only count your actual weapons as weapons. Every starship in the Federation has what's called a warp core at the heart of its engines. It's a very powerful reactor, and without it, you're not going anywhere in a hurry. They can also be manually ejected, if there's a breach and the core's going to explode or something. So while you can only use it once, every starship has a potentially powerful explosive that can be jettisoned in the path of an enemy craft."

"There are creative defensive options, too. We have energy shields to protect the ship from damage, but they can only take so much before they fail. If you're taking torpedo fire, a lot of those kinds of missiles are heat-seeking, so venting plasma from the warp nacelles can confuse the targeting and draw the torpedoes away from the main body of the ship."

There's another aspect that immediately comes to mind, although the memories surrounding it are a little less casual than what came before. "Boarding another ship's usually done by transporter, which is a kind of mechanical teleportation, or flying over in a shuttlecraft. On my last mission, I had to board an enemy ship without use of either, to try to take it over from the inside. So I suited up, had my ship line up with their airlock a few kilometers out, and got jettisoned out the garbage chute. A living person isn't a typical target for starship sensors to pick up out in space, so they wouldn't have been able to lock on and shoot me down before I made it over."

"One might also swim in three dimensions," the amphibious academic adds. The thought does lead him to questions, though, as most new ideas do. "Where do star-ships hide, that their approach may be unexpected? Among the clouds?"

"Would it not be wise to carry a second of these cores, in case the first should fail? Then, also, it might be a weapon without being a last resort."

Some ideas, Shade-Seeker grasps easily given his backgrounds, but others inspire inquiry. Shields he understands as a mage, and when the present questions have been sorted, he might ask about kinds of shields, and whether starships attune themselves to the threat the way mages must.