Kobayashi Maru

by Michael A. Martin

  “For a Klingon ship, it doesn’t look all that dangerous,” Reed said, sounding surprised.

  “Guess they can’t all be battle cruisers,” Travis said. “Even the Klingons must have freighters and tugs and garbage scows.”

  Archer nodded in agreement as he studied the image on the screen. Like the few Klingon battle cruisers he had encountered over the past few years, this vessel possessed a long, narrow midsection, which terminated on its forward end at a small oblong command-and-control structure that abutted a much wider aft section, to which a pair of engine nacelles were attached. Unlike those other vessels, however, this craft’s hull seemed to display the wear of long, hard toil rather than the scars of combat, and was conspicuously bereft of overt weaponry.

  “The vessel conforms to the general configuration of a Hasparath-class military cargo vessel,” T’Pol said. “Two hundred thirty-seven meters in length, one hundred eleven meters at the beam. Mass of approximately two hundred thousand metric tons.”

  Archer nodded appreciatively. The other ship was nearly fifty meters longer than Enterprise, and considerably more massive. Hell of a thing to just leave lying around, he thought.

  Speaking in clinical tones, T’Pol continued her report. “The vessel appears to have been modified to carry neutronic fuel and other volatile chemical compounds, judging from both the visible deviations from design norms and the vessel’s sensor signature.”

  “Is she a derelict?” Archer asked. “Or is anyone alive aboard that ship?”

  “Scanning,” the Vulcan woman said. After a brief pause she said, “I’m picking up nearly four hundred strong lifesigns.” She paused again as she raised an eyebrow and fixed her dark gaze upon Archer. “Predominantly human.”

  Archer’s jaw fell open involuntarily. “Humans. Operating a Klingon cargo ship. In Coalition space.”

  “And without a functioning navigation beam,” Reed grumbled.

  Anger drew Archer’s mouth closed again, hardening his jaw like quick-drying thermoconcrete as he turned to stare at the enigmatic image on the viewer. “Hail that ship, Hoshi. T’Pol, assemble a boarding team. Travis, I want you to warm up Shuttlepod One.”

  He turned again, facing T’Pol while Hoshi busied herself signaling the other ship. “That ship’s captain has got one hell of a lot of explaining to do,” he said.

  “Capture,” Mayweather said, allowing himself to feel no small amount of relief as he heard the repressurization valve on Shuttlepod One’s portside hatchway give a reassuring whoomph. “We’ve established a hard dock with the freighter.”

  “I’ve always hated that sound,” said Lieutenant Reed, who was seated directly behind Captain Archer’s copilot’s seat, to Mayweather’s left. “It makes me expect to have to start sucking bloody vacuum at any moment.”

  “That, Malcolm,” the captain said as he put the console before him into “safe” mode, “is only the sound of two mutually compatible airlocks making beautiful music together.”

  “Perhaps the airlocks ought to get a room, sir,” Reed said quietly.

  Mayweather turned in his seat and cast a sidelong glance at the aft portion of the shuttlepod’s small crew cabin, where Chief Engineer Burch chuckled as he unhooked his flight harness. Reed nodded toward the captain as he unstrapped himself from his seat, checking the charge on his phase pistol as Burch and the two MACOs seated nearby did likewise before moving swiftly toward the hatch. Mayweather thought he saw the tactical officer suppressing a gratified smile as the ranking MACO trooper, Sergeant Fiona McKenzie, eyed the airlock with evident suspicion while the much younger and greener Corporal Matthew Kelly held his phase rifle in a white-knuckled death grip.

  “Don’t worry, guys,” Burch said, evidently beating down an ironic grin of his own. “I packed a big roll of duct tape in my toolkit, just in case the airlocks decide to give us any real trouble.”

  “I suppose the airlocks would be one of the first things a human freighter captain would modify on a Klingon tub, Captain,” Reed said, not sounding terribly reassured. “I just wish we’d brought the captain of this free-falling disaster aboard Enterprise instead of agreeing to come aboard his ship.”

  Archer shook his head. “You know as well as I do that it’s standard Starfleet procedure to board and inspect any problem vessel we encounter, Malcolm,” he said. “And judging just from what I’ve seen so far, this bucket is a textbook example of a problem vessel.”

  “Fair enough, Captain,” Reed said, raising his weapon to a ready position as the hatchway hissed open. “I just have a bad feeling about this ship.”

  Mayweather felt his ears pop slightly the moment the hatch cleared its seals, a sensation that punctuated the short-lived movement of a slight breeze as the small pressure differential between the shuttlepod and the freighter abruptly equalized. Having grown up on a freighter not so vastly different from this one, the sensation didn’t trouble him in the least. As he followed the MACOs, Captain Archer, and Lieutenants Reed and Burch into the familiar narrowness of the gray, utilitarian corridor that lay beyond the shuttlepod’s hatchway, he felt a pang of nostalgia that bordered on homesickness.

  It’s been way too long since I’ve been in touch with Mom and Paul and everybody else on the Horizon, he thought, drawing in a deep draft of the freighter’s recycled, faintly metallic air. I should at least get a letter off to them soon.

  “Where’s the welcoming committee?” Archer asked, his phase pistol drawn and at the ready. The MACOs flanked him as he took the point—Mayweather knew he wouldn’t have agreed to bring the troopers along had either of them insisted on taking the point—and moved steadily forward down the conduit-lined corridor toward a bend some ten meters distant.

  “They knew we were coming,” Mayweather said, his voice echoing along the otherwise silent corridor. Unlike the captain and Reed, he had left his weapon holstered, though he wasn’t allowing his hand to venture far from its handle. Somewhat encumbered by the half-meter-long toolkit he carried, Burch had likewise left his phase pistol at his side.

  “Maybe they’re baking us a cake,” Reed said with a weak smile.

  The sound of multiple footfalls approaching from beyond the bend in the corridor prompted Mayweather finally to grasp his phase pistol and raise it defensively. Despite the results of Commander T’Pol’s sensor scans, he half expected to bump into a group of angry Klingons at any moment.

  Three figures suddenly strode into view.

  “Halt!” McKenzie cried as both MACOs raised their weapons in a clear gesture of warning.

  The trio, which consisted of two men and a woman—all apparently human—abruptly stopped in their tracks. Each of the three raised their hands, their faces displaying expressions of pure shock.

  “Oh, crap,” said the middle-aged Asian man who stood at the front of the trio, his colloquial speech belied by an accent worthy of an Oxford English Lit professor. “Looks like we’ve been boarded by bloody pirates again.”

  Mayweather nearly snickered out loud at this as he appraised the other man’s ruffled white shirt, black buccaneer-style boots, and bright paisley-printed waist sash. All that was missing from the stereotypical image of an ancient Caribbean freebooter was an eye patch, a parrot perched on one shoulder, and perhaps a peg leg, though an open jug of rum and a hook hand would have been nice touches as well.

  “Easy, Sergeant,” Archer said to the female MACO. She nodded to her fellow trooper, and both took a step backward, their rifles lowered slightly. Mayweather continued holding on to his own weapon, as did Reed.

  The captain holstered his phase pistol, took a step toward the olive-skinned Asian man, and extended his right hand. “Captain Jonathan Archer,” he said. “Commanding the Starship Enterprise, from Earth.”

  “Captain Kojiro Vance,” the man said, accepting Archer’s handshake and flashing a brilliant, and apparently somewhat relieved, smile. “Master and commander of the merchant vessel S.S. Kobayashi Maru, based out of the port of Amber on Tau Ceti IV. Welco
me aboard.”

  Archer released his grip on the other man’s hand and took a moment to exchange introductions of the other members of the boarding team and Vance’s officers, both of whom were clad in light blue jumpsuits more characteristic of flight engineers or other technical personnel than of pirates. Vance introduced the woman as Jacqueline Searles, his chief engineer, and the man as Arturo Stiles, his first mate.

  Once the initial pleasantries were completed, Reed said, “We used our searchlights to read your hull markings and looked up your vessel in the Earth Cargo Service registry.” From beneath a disapproving scowl he added, “The records show her as a Class-III neutronic fuel carrier, one presumably manufactured by an Earth firm or one of the Martian contractors.”

  “Imagine our surprise at discovering that she’s actually a rehabilitated Klingon military freighter,” Archer said.

  Vance sighed, staring off at a bulkhead as he gathered his thoughts. “So you’ve noticed that,” he said at length. “The port authorities tend to overlook such things in some of the more remote places. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of adopting Tau Ceti IV as a home port, rather than carrying the flag of Earth or Alpha Centauri or Vulcan.”

  Or even Altair VI, for that matter, Mayweather thought, wondering if the still relatively new frontier settlement there had already acquired slightly too much law and order for the freighter captain’s taste. The fact that Tau Ceti, whose human colonies lay about five light-years closer to Earth than did Altair, could allow someone like Vance to operate with impunity seemed to Mayweather a testimony to just how much work lay ahead for the nascent Coalition of Planets. Vance and his ship seemed to be an object lesson in how desperately the interstellar neighborhood needed the law and order the Coalition promised—including, apparently, those parts of the galaxy that were in Earth’s backyard.

  “What’s your point, Captain Archer?” Searles asked, folding her arms defensively across her chest. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she frowned, revealing the subtle, scar-like lines characteristic of long-term exposure to low levels of delta radiation, which was still a common pitfall in the space freight business. Mayweather guessed she was probably ten to fifteen years younger than her apparent age, which might make her his contemporary.

  “You don’t think flying around in Coalition space in a Klingon ship is a problem?” Mayweather said, holstering his weapon. No wonder these people prefer to ship out with their lights turned off, he added silently.

  Searles waved one of her hands dismissively. “Captain Vance has had the Maru retrofitted extensively since he acquired her. Except for her gross hull configuration, she’s about as much a Klingon vessel as your Enterprise is.”

  Stiles, the fortyish jumpsuited man who stood at Vance’s other side, spoke up in clipped, almost angry tones. “Thanks to those modifications, the Maru conforms to every regulation in the UESPA rulebook governing the equipment and capabilities of Class-III neutronic fuel carriers.”

  Vance nodded, looking pleased at the point his exec had just made. “For all intents and purposes she’s precisely as advertised in your ship registry, as well as in our current ECS flight plan, and in our own logs: a Class-III neutronic fuel carrier with eighty-one hands on board.”

  Archer raised an eyebrow. “Eighty-one? Our sensors picked up quite a few more lifesigns than that.”

  “In addition to the Maru’s crew, we’re also carrying about three hundred colonists, engineers, and various other technical experts and tradespeople,” Stiles added, thrusting his chin out in Archer’s direction in a silent so there expression.

  Vance nodded cheerfully. “All of them qualified, ready, and eager to carry the blessings of civilization to the farthest reaches of the galactic hinterlands. Where no man has gone before, as it were.”

  “Of course, you’re welcome to verify all of that for yourselves if you’re not content to take our word for it, Captain Archer,” Stiles said in stilted tones.

  Archer smiled humorlessly. “I’m afraid Starfleet doesn’t give me the option of taking anything at face value, Mister Stiles. Especially not after we’ve found such a flagrant violation of ECS and UESPA navigational regs.”

  Vance once again looked confused. His expression would have been comical had the matter before him not been so very serious. “Come again, Captain?” he said.

  “Captain Vance, why is this vessel running dark and silent?” Archer said.

  Vance shifted his weight from one buccaneer-booted foot to the other in obvious discomfiture. At length, he said, “Lately we’ve been experiencing a few small…technical problems, Captain Archer. But it’s nothing that Miz Searles can’t handle. We’re already well on our way to putting all of it to rights.”

  “Do you need any help?” Mayweather asked.

  “We could use our grappler,” said Burch. “Give you a tow to the port at Altai—”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Vance said quickly, interrupting. “We’ve just had to shut down a few nonessential systems temporarily in order to make some…in-flight repairs.”

  Archer glowered. “Are you telling me that you consider something as basic as your navigation beam a ‘nonessential’ system?”

  Though Vance looked no less uncomfortable than he had before, he now seemed to have no trouble returning Archer’s glower. “Frankly, the only thing I consider truly essential, Captain Archer, is getting my ship back under way as quickly as possible. My passengers and cargo have to reach their destinations on time.”

  “And where might those destinations be?” Archer wanted to know.

  “The first one on this voyage is the Gamma Hydra system,” Vance said around an avaricious leer. “Those planets and most of the surrounding sector are extremely resource-rich, with huge deposits of everything from deuterium to pergium to the dilithium everybody’s been so worried about running out of ever since the Coridan disaster. We’re transporting a crew of mineral-extraction experts and other specialists to the outposts that have been popping up all over the vicinity over the past few years.”

  Gamma Hydra, Mayweather thought, recalling that the Horizon was scheduled to bring some technical and commercial cargo out to one of that sector’s rapidly proliferating new outposts sometime in the not-too-distant future.

  “Gamma Hydra,” Archer repeated as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Judging from what I’ve heard, that’s a pretty rough neighborhood.”

  “Meaning what?” Searles said.

  “Meaning the Gamma Hydra sector is immediately adjacent to space claimed by the Klingon Empire, Captain Vance,” said Reed.

  Archer nodded to Vance. “I’m pretty sure that the Klingons are every bit as interested as you are in developing the very same resources that you’re salivating over.”

  Expecting Vance to start pushing back harder against Archer’s increasingly challenging tone, Mayweather was surprised when the freighter captain merely threw his head back and laughed.

  “My crew and I are probably responsible for a goodly number of those stories about dilithium-hungry Klingon raiders plundering the Gamma Hydra sector,” Vance said after he’d finally gotten his breathing back under control. “Spreading those kinds of tales tends to encourage my competitors to drill their wells somewhat closer to the safe green hills of Earth, as it were. Which leaves more profits for me to spread around the fleshpots of Rigel X and Risa.”

  “I suppose plying your trade in a Klingon-built ship could lower your profile quite a bit out in places like Gamma Hydra,” Reed said in a tone that suggested he was beginning to appreciate the other man’s tactical instincts. “At least as far as any real, live Klingons you might bump into out there might be concerned—as long as they don’t find out who’s driving, that is.”

  “Very well reasoned, Lieutenant Reed,” Vance said with an engaging smile. “Tell me, have you ever considered seeking your fortune in the private sector?”

  “Captain Vance, I didn’t come here to bring my crew to a job fair,” A
rcher said, his voice edging into noticeable testiness.

  Vance sighed again, then nodded. “No. I don’t suppose that you did. In any case, we’re not expecting a lot of trouble from the Klingons. At least not with the United Earth government and its Coalition of Planets allies working so hard to protect Gamma Hydra from the Klingons with that ‘Neutral Zone’ idea—a no-man’s-land that your Starfleet will no doubt defend with great ferocity once it’s established.”

  Evidently losing patience with the topic of galactic politics, Archer said, “Captain, my immediate concern is defending Coalition space from this vessel.”

  “I’m sorry?” Vance said, his expression going abruptly blank.

  “The Kobayashi Maru is a menace to navigation, Captain,” Mayweather said.

  Vance tipped his head to the side and blinked in evident bewilderment. “Beg pardon?” he said.

  “Again…you’re not using a navigation beam,” Archer said, speaking with exaggerated slowness, like an Academy instructor trying to get through to a particularly thickheaded cadet.

  “Or even a bloody night light,” Reed added without smiling.

  “Captain Vance already explained about all of that,” Searles said, frowning and speaking with the same slow meter Archer had used. “I had to take the navbeam offline for a few hours, just for the duration of our other repairs.”

  “That’s why I took the Maru somewhat off the beaten path, Captain Archer,” Vance said, holding up a hand in an obvious effort to prevent Searles from aggravating Archer any further. “Out of consideration for any other vessels that might happen by while our trousers are still down, so to speak.”

  “How very considerate of you,” said Archer.

  Vance didn’t appear to have noticed the jab. “On the other hand, space is bloody huge. I hardly think we’re posing any serious danger to anyone, navbeam or no.”

  “Then humor us, Captain,” Archer said. “And remember, the sooner we complete the inspection the regs require us to make, the sooner you can get back to carrying, as you put it, ‘the blessings of civilization to the farthest reaches of the galactic hinterlands. Where no man has gone before, as it were.’”