Kobayashi Maru

by Michael A. Martin

  Trip nodded silently, and did as the centurion instructed. From what he’d observed of the weapon, he knew he’d never get the safety setting disengaged before Terix burned him up like a Roman candle. Or a Romulan candle, he thought absurdly.

  A few moments later, Terix had recovered his weapon. While covering Trip with the trooper’s pistol in his left hand, he manipulated a switch on the handle of his own weapon with his right. He then holstered the weapon in his left hand, apparently content to keep it as a backup for the one he kept pointed at Trip’s head.

  With his free hand, Terix removed two small objects from inside his ears, first the right, then the left.

  Understanding began to dawn on Trip. That was no safety catch on his weapon, he thought, appreciating the engineering ingenuity involved as much as the tactical genius. It was some sort of ultrasonic attack. Something that works on a frequency so high that only dogs and Romulans can hear it. Unless they’re wearing protective earplugs.

  Or they’re not really Romulans in the first place.

  “We are not leaving together,” Terix said as he took a single menacing step in Trip’s direction. “Commander Tucker.”

  I didn’t fall down the way everybody else did, he thought. So he doesn’t have to just suspect I might not be the real deal anymore. Now he knows for sure.

  His hands raised and his palms out, Trip tried to put on the same let’s-both-be-reasonable-and-talk-this-over-before-either-of-us-does-anything-rash grin that had forestalled more than a few bar fights during his undergraduate years.

  “I should have listened to my mother when I was in school back in Romii,” he said aloud. “She always warned me about playing those Frenchotte recordings with the volume up so high.”

  Terix appeared unmoved by Trip’s improvised excuses. “Once I obtain whatever warp-drive data Ch’uihv has stored in this place,” he said, “you will die with everyone else here when I vaporize this complex.”

  “Is killing me your idea, Terix? Or Valdore’s?”

  “I have made the admiral aware of my suspicions.”

  “But I’m willing to bet he doesn’t share them.” At least he might not until after he hears your next report. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent us out here together on this wild mogai hunt without another couple of men to watch your back.”

  Terix’s scowl deepened, but Trip could see that doubt was warring with resolve behind the centurion’s dark, hooded eyes.

  “You are not loyal to the Empire,” he said. His weapon remained unwaveringly trained on Trip’s head. “And even the Ejhoi Ormiin accuse you of being a Terran spy.”

  “And you believe that? Ch’uihv is a pathological liar, Terix. It’s how he makes his living.” He gestured toward the spot where the dissident leader lay unconscious. “For Erebus’s sake, man, he’s so crooked he has to screw his pants on every morning.”

  The weapon seemed to waver ever so slightly in Terix’s hand, though Trip couldn’t be sure that wasn’t merely wishful thinking on his part.

  “But you are not even Romulan,” the centurion said. “You couldn’t be.” He punctuated his point by holding up the protective earplugs he still clutched in his free hand.

  Think fast, Charles. “Why? Because my hearing is defective?”

  “I find it curious that you have never seen fit to mention this rather convenient ‘defect’ before,” Terix said.

  From somewhere far beyond the confines of the building, Trip could hear the sound of distant thunder. He found it mildly ironic that the keen-eared centurion had shown no sign as yet of having noticed it.

  Just as he found it hard not to fantasize that the sound represented the faint and fading hope of a last-minute cavalry rescue. More goddamn wishful thinking, he thought, trying but not quite succeeding in dismissing the distracting notion.

  “My bad hearing isn’t something I’m particularly proud of,” Trip said, hoping it wasn’t as painfully obvious to Terix as it was to him that he was merely grasping at straws in order to stay alive. “After all, it’s kept me out of the military my whole life. And it’s kept me from having a career like the one you’ve had. Can you imagine how that feels?” When all else fails, he thought, there’s always flattery. Not to mention spadefuls of good, old-fashioned Florida bullshit.

  Another rumble of thunder sounded, much closer this time. Terix obviously noticed it now, and cast a quick glance at the still-empty doorway, to which his right side was now faced.

  Jumping Terix remained out of the question. But Trip knew he still had to press forward with whatever advantage he might have just created for himself, however narrow.

  “Listen, Terix,” he said, trying to sound far more reasonable than worried. “Whatever you might believe about me, I’m the best chance Admiral Valdore has of achieving the goal of creating a working avaihh lli vastam stardrive prototype now that Ehrehin is gone. The admiral might be a little upset with you if you do anything to compromise that. Kill me and you set the whole project back by fvheisn.”

  For an interminably long moment, Terix appeared to mull over the prospect of losing years of hard-fought progress in high-warp physics. Despite his apparent internal debate, he’d lowered his gun only a few centimeters, if that.

  More thunder, inside the building this time. A klaxon blared, its repetitive tattoo echoing throughout the complex.

  Terix raised his weapon again, pointing it straight at Trip’s head. “I believe I can live with that,” he said with a snarl.

  Trip watched him begin squeezing the trigger with exaggerated, excruciating slowness.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Monday, July 21, 2155

  Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS

  SOMETIME DURING THE LAST INSTANT of life he expected to experience, Jonathan Archer made a decision: He simply wasn’t going to stop fighting.

  Even as Krell’s bat’leth blade descended toward his head, Archer brought his own weapon to bear in front of his face, one hand on the traditional grip, the other grasping the outer blade.

  The tip of Krell’s bat’leth sliced through the gap between the outer and inner blade of Archer’s weapon, becoming trapped there, wedged mere inches from Archer’s face. He grimaced, ignoring the pain in his punctured side, ignoring the blood that slickened the outer blade beneath his lacerated fingers, and twisted with every ounce of strength he still possessed.

  Krell’s blade suddenly torqued to the side, and he grunted in anger as one of his hands lost its grip.

  Archer kicked upward with his boot, connecting hard with the Klingon’s crotch. He knew it was a dirty tactic, but he was already long past observing the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

  Krell shouted in commingled pain and rage, his other hand’s grip loosening on his bat’leth just enough to enable Archer to twist the interlocked blades even further, until the combination of leverage, momentum, and muscle pulled the weapon entirely out of the admiral’s grasp. Archer quickly threw the two still conjoined weapons as far across the cavern as he could, then rolled even as Krell moved to tackle him.

  Scrambling to get his feet back under him, Archer lunged forward, grabbing Krell’s long hair and pulling it hard so as to ratchet the Klingon’s head violently to one side. He quickly slammed the palm of his hand into Krell’s eye socket, then backed away as the Klingon flailed his arms, apparently disoriented.

  Then Archer saw that Krell was headed directly toward the fallen weapons, and dashed toward him to keep him from grabbing the mutually jammed blades. The Klingon crouched, sweeping his foot out and connecting with Archer’s ribs. At least one rib broke with a sickening crack.

  Now it was Archer’s turn to scream as he staggered back and crashed against a stalagmite. The impact knocked Archer painfully onto his belly, and the Klingon instantly leaped onto his back, his knobby hand clawing at Archer’s face. Krell dug his fingers into the captain’s mouth and pulled at his cheek, as if he meant to rip his face off entirely.

  Archer rolled forward, flipping the Kling
on over his back, praying that the momentum would make Krell let go of his cheek without major trauma. Krell toppled over the top of him, crashing back against another rocky outcropping. This one, however, was evidently less durable than the one Archer had just struck; it exploded into a spray of dirty powder and chunks of porous rock from the impact.

  Moving toward the entangled bat’leths, Archer saw Krell scrambling back to him again, swinging his huge right arm in a haymaker punch. Archer sidestepped and ducked, then planted both feet and caught the Klingon’s arm as it passed him by millimeters. Archer pulled the arm forward and down very quickly, using the Klingon’s own momentum to unbalance and topple him. The simple judo move flipped Krell over, and the admiral’s shoulder made an unpleasant-sounding pop as his body slammed into the rocky floor.

  Archer stepped toward the bat’leths again, but Krell scissored his legs out, catching Archer’s foot. He fell to the dirt, his fingers scrabbling against the ground only centimeters from the fallen blades.

  Krell stood up, his right arm hanging limply at his side, his face caked in purplish blood and mud. He swayed unsteadily for a moment, then moved again toward the weapons.

  Once again, Archer turned his opponent’s own movement against him, though this time he kicked at the back of Krell’s knees. One of them blew outward, a shattered shinbone tearing open the Klingon’s pants in a spray of purple.

  Letting out a sound of pain unlike any Archer had ever heard, Krell fell to the ground. Unfortunately he landed close enough to the entwined bat’leths to wrap his good hand around one of them.

  Archer stood, wincing at the pain in his side, his mind racing. Even injured, Krell would be unassailable if he managed to take up both weapons.

  Unless…I don’t use myself as the target, Archer thought. Crouching, he scooped up a double handful of the dust the broken stalagmite had scattered on the ground and flung it straight into Krell’s snarling face.

  The debris cloud momentarily blinded the Klingon, long enough for Archer to slip behind him. With a roar, he tackled Krell, moving his arm smoothly around his foe’s neck in a chokehold.

  Krell flailed with his good arm—pulling the bat’leths apart and dropping one to the ground in the process—as he tried to dislodge the human clinging to his back. His fractured leg refused to support him any further, however, and he crashed to the ground, with Archer clinging to his back all the way down.

  Archer released the Klingon and rolled away from him, grasping for his weapon and finally connecting with it. He heard a whistle in the air as he rolled again, and Krell’s blade struck the ground where his leg had been half a heartbeat earlier.

  Scrambling to his feet, Archer grasped the bat’leth by both grips, raising it as he turned to see that Krell had somehow managed to get up and now stood just a few meters away. Froth flecked the Klingon’s lips as he moved to close the gap between the combatants and prepared to deliver another deadly blow with his weapon.

  Barely avoiding the bat’leth’s impact, Archer sliced his own blade toward Krell, even as the Klingon fell toward him.

  For a moment that seemed frozen in time, Archer felt resistance, then saw a violet-hued spray and heard a guttural scream.

  Turning, he saw Krell on the ground, writhing in shock and spurting blood from the stump that terminated just below his left shoulder. Krell’s severed arm twitched in the dust, its hand still gripping the bat’leth.

  Archer could feel his head swirling and his side aching as he knelt beside the Klingon. He quickly removed the belt from his pants and cinched it around his dazed foe’s stump, slowing the spurt of arterial blood significantly. Krell had fallen too far into a realm of pain and shock to notice, or to resist.

  Archer looked up, for the first time in minutes noticing and hearing the screams and cheers and shouts coming from the gallery above. He focused his gaze on one particular section near the front, where he saw the chancellor and several High Council members standing. They didn’t look at all pleased by the outcome of the combat.

  At that moment, Archer couldn’t have cared less about their reactions, their vanity, or their so-called “honor.”

  “I have defeated Admiral Krell in lawful combat,” Archer yelled, aware that his voice sounded hoarse and ragged. “He fought honorably, as did I. But I came to Qo’noS to avoid spilling any more blood. Not Klingon blood, not Tera’ngan blood.”

  He pointed to Krell. “This man is a credit to the Empire, and a fierce warrior. He deserves to continue aiding his people, to push the Empire ever forward. I will not kill him. My people would not consider such an act in any way honorable.”

  He stared directly at the chancellor as he spoke, hoping that his own waning strength and nearly blinding pain wouldn’t overwhelm him entirely before he finished making his point. “I have satisfied your challenge. I have fulfilled my promise. Now you must do the same.”

  Archer felt his legs suddenly go weak, as though they had in an instant turned to water. His vision grew hazy, and the chancellor appeared to be withdrawing into a dark tunnel, an inscrutable expression on his face as the crowd in the gallery roared incomprehensible things.

  Then darkness came, followed immediately by silence.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Taugus III

  TRIP CLOSED his eyes and wondered whether he’d feel the disruptor’s searing heat before the weapon broiled his vital organs from the inside out. Or if, just before the end came, he’d hear the sizzle of the pistol’s energy discharge over the din of the alarm klaxons that continued to blare and reverberate throughout the Ejhoi Ormiin facility.

  The klaxon did little to blunt the crackle of a column of disturbed air, which arrived right on schedule. Trip was surprised at how little pain he felt.

  In fact, he felt no pain whatsoever.

  A familiar male voice spoke from behind him. “Commander Tucker? Is that really you? Are you all right?”

  He opened his eyes, which were immediately drawn to the spot on the floor where Terix lay supine, his body crumpled near a pair of the unconscious dissidents and his own fallen disruptor pistol. The blare of the klaxon must have drowned out whatever sound the centurion’s body had made on its way down.

  Trip turned to face the English-accented man who had called to him—and was further surprised to note that the man hadn’t come alone. Both figures wore black paramilitary-type clothing rather than their more familiar blue Starfleet jumpsuits.

  Somebody’d better pinch me, he thought, momentarily half convinced that he was experiencing another one of those dreamlike yet almost tangibly real visions that sometimes came to him when his mind straddled the weird twilight realm that lay between slumber and consciousness.

  Then he realized that he had rarely, if ever, felt quite so wide awake as he did at this moment. After all, it’s kinda tough to nod off while somebody’s got a gun pointed straight at your head.

  “Malcolm,” Trip said, still incredulous. “T’Pol. How the hell did you two get here?”

  T’Pol paused to glance at the setting on the phase pistol in her hand, then gazed back at Trip with one eyebrow raised in an ironic arch. “Very likely the same way you did, Commander,” she said. “In a spaceship.”

  Trip frowned. “Well, I didn’t think you paddled after me in a rowboat.” Can’t afford to start getting used to these last-minute reprieves, he told himself, nettled even though—or perhaps because—he knew he owed his life to the out-of-the-blue intervention of two of his closest friends. But he didn’t want to examine this new turn of luck too closely, lest he convince himself either that he was indeed dreaming or that some higher power was quietly guiding his destiny.

  Still feeling poleaxed by the cavalry’s unexpected arrival—not to mention disoriented by the blaring alarms—Trip could only stand and watch as Malcolm methodically gathered up the disruptor weapons that lay scattered across the floor or were still attached to their unconscious Romulan owners, either holstered on belts or clutched in insensate fingers. Malcolm kept
his phase pistol at the ready as he went to work, starting with the fallen centurion, whom Trip noted was still breathing.

  Unlike these folks, our weapons have a stun setting, Trip thought, relieved that no one had died here as yet. He was bitterly aware, however, that circumstances would still probably require him to kill Terix at some point—probably sooner rather than later—now that he and Sopek had unmasked each other in front of the centurion.

  With a start, he became conscious that T’Pol was speaking to him again. “I take it you came here in pursuit of a specific goal, Commander,” she said, her voice raised to a near shout to cut through the voluminous background noise.

  He nodded. “The dissidents based here stole some of Doctor Ehrehin’s warp-seven drive research data. We came to determine exactly what they took. And to get it back, to prevent them from putting any of it to use.” He realized even as he spoke the words that she probably had no knowledge about Ehrehin, much less anything else he was talking about. But he hoped she would understand the urgency of his task nonetheless; he hoped they’d have time to discuss all the particulars in detail later.

  Just as he knew that the mission that he and Centurion Terix had undertaken might already be a lost cause were they to overlook so much as a single copy of the purloined data.

  “And have you managed to locate the stolen information yet?” T’Pol wanted to know.

  “No,” said a groggy male voice. “And he won’t.”

  Trip and T’Pol turned together toward Ch’uihv, who was rather laboriously trying to rise to a sitting position on the floor. Once he had done so, he raised his hands in surrender in response to Malcolm, who stood nearby with his phase pistol aimed straight at the dissident leader’s midsection.

  “Captain Sopek?” T’Pol said. Trip allowed himself to enjoy the flash of surprise that somehow managed to make a momentary escape to her usually stoic face.