Kobayashi Maru

by Michael A. Martin

  Corporal Ryan, one of the two MACO troopers who had accompanied Captain Archer to the planet’s surface, had called him to one of the Klingon capital’s minimalist medical facilities. Because Archer’s team had taken Enterprise’s last remaining shuttlepod, and because time was of the essence, Phlox had had no choice but to beam down to the facility, an experience he still found troubling even under the best of circumstances. And this was hardly the best of circumstances.

  Regardless, he was grateful that Corporal Ryan’s summons hadn’t come any later than it did. Archer had suffered significant blood loss during what Phlox had been told was a duel with a Klingon admiral named Krell—whom Phlox could see had gotten the worst of the injuries—and had needed an immediate transfusion. Whether or not the hulking Klingon physician Kon’Jef, in whose infirmary Phlox was now working, could have fixed Archer’s wounds was immaterial; Phlox doubted that his Klingon counterpart could provide human-compatible hemoglobin to Archer, much less the stored units of whole blood Phlox had brought with him from Enterprise.

  Apparently finally taking notice of the crowded conditions in the surgical bay, the giant Klingon doctor barked a few terse orders, and the majority of the assembled warriors obligingly shuffled outside into the flagstone-lined corridor. Phlox heaved a quiet sigh of relief that Archer’s transfusion tubes were no longer in danger of being yanked out by an accidental encounter with the tip of a bat’leth some broad-shouldered Klingon soldier was carrying across his back.

  One of those who remained behind was a striking Klingon woman. Her teeth were sharp and her breasts were pushed up and half exposed in a revealing outfit made of fur and leather. She stood near the table upon which Krell lay, displaying as much grief as Phlox had ever seen on a Klingon face.

  “Thank you for clearing the operating chamber,” Phlox said, looking over to the Klingon doctor with what he hoped was a nonthreatening smile.

  “It was not for your benefit, DenobuluSngan,” Kon’Jef said, fairly spitting the words from underneath a long, squared-off gray beard.

  Phlox nodded, tilting his head to one side. “Nevertheless, I appreciate the gesture.”

  He worked quickly on the shirtless and unconscious Archer, using a hand-held antimicrobial cleansing unit and a protein fuser in an attempt to repair the captain’s disconcertingly deep thoracic wound.

  Archer’s breath changed and he stirred. He tried to rise from the flat stone bier beneath him, then winced and ceased making the effort. “Am I gonna live, Doc?” he said, his voice weak.

  Phlox looked down at his captain’s face for an instant, nodding, then returned to his duties. “Yes, Captain, but you will be rather sore for a while, once you’re up and moving about. Luckily, the Klingon weapon missed your liver and several other major organs. Unfortunately, it chipped two of your ribs badly. You may experience some respiratory discomfort for the next several weeks, I would imagine.”

  “How about Krell?”

  Phlox spared a glance over to the other table, where the Klingon doctor and an assistant purposefully went about their work, their blue surgical gowns spattered in purplish gore. The woman still stood nearby, watching the proceedings intently.

  “It would appear that your opponent will indeed live. From what I could see, he has a compound fracture in one leg, a dislocated shoulder, and a rather cleanly detached arm.”

  Archer winced again. “That would be because I sliced it off,” he said quietly. “Hope there won’t be a lot of hard feelings about that.”

  “Well, Shran is finally on speaking terms with you again, isn’t he, Captain?”

  Archer chuckled, remembering how angry the former Andorian soldier had been during and after the knife duel they had been forced to fight late last year. “Compared to what happened to Krell, Shran only got a haircut, Phlox,” he said. “And I doubt that Klingon limbs grow back on their own the way Andorian antennae do.”

  “True, Captain,” Phlox said, nodding. “However, the physician attending to Krell believes that he might be able to reattach the severed arm. The admiral’s other injuries, while painful and messy, appear eminently repairable as well.”

  Phlox inspected his handiwork closely, pleased at the results so far. “I’ve done what I can for the moment, Captain. You will still need to lie down for a while and finish your transfusion. Were this any ordinary circumstance, I would prescribe bed rest for at least a week. I understand, however, that our current circumstances may not allow you that luxury.”

  “No, they won’t,” Archer said, smiling weakly. “I’m glad you noticed. Let’s hope it means we won’t be on opposite sides of one of those tired old ‘captain-you’re-in-no-shape-to-leave-sickbay’ arguments that doctors like to start.”

  “That depends entirely on how careful you can be over the next few days about not undoing all the work I’ve just done stitching you back together,” Phlox said around what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Now, with your permission I would like to offer my assistance to Doctor Kon’Jef.”

  “That’s fine by me, Phlox,” Archer said. “I’ll just try to go back to a less painful place in my head.”

  Phlox stripped off a pair of surgical gloves and put his hands under a sanitizing sprayer mounted on one of the dull metal walls. Grasping another pair of gloves, he approached the woman and the two male Klingons who were working on Admiral Krell.

  Although he hadn’t known the identity of Archer’s wounded opponent at first, Phlox realized that he was quite familiar with him once he’d heard the man’s name. Less than a year ago the fleet admiral had been intent on destroying everyone at the Qu’Vat colony—including Phlox and Archer—in order to halt the spread of the augment-derived metagenic virus.

  “I’d like to put my skills at your disposal in your efforts to reattach the admiral’s arm,” Phlox said. “I have done extensive work in neurological reconstruction, and I have made a close study of the tissue-regeneration techniques of the Adigeons.”

  The woman spat at him, glaring. “I will not allow you to touch Krell. The virus you inflicted upon him has done enough damage to our House already.”

  The Klingon doctor growled something at the woman in their native tongue, but the words were too quick and low and guttural for Phlox’s translator unit to pick up. The woman glared again, baring her fangs, then stepped up to Phlox.

  He swiftly pulled his eyes up from where they were—his gaze had immediately focused on the point where her deep cleavage swelled most provocatively—and met her angry gaze.

  “If you harm Krell any further,” she snarled, “you will not see another sunrise, DenobuluSngan.” She spat out the Klingon name for his race as though it were a curse.

  As she moved away from him, Phlox stepped in to examine the work already being done by Kon’Jef and the other Klingon medic. The work seemed to be competent—at least so far—but Phlox feared it would leave Krell with only partial use of his hand.

  “Please allow me to assure you and the admiral’s…wife, that I will do everything in my power to help him.”

  Kon’Jef glared at him with hard, steel-gray eyes. “She’s his sister. I am his husband. And I will make certain you do nothing wrong.”

  Being a Denobulan with three wives, each of whom had three spouses of her own, Phlox had no reason to find Krell’s family arrangement in any way unusual. Nodding, he reached for a microscalpel that lay on a nearby tray. “Do you have a pair of fiber-enhancers and some brighter surgical lights?” he asked the other two medical personnel. “I’d like to make certain that Admiral Krell regains the full use of his arm.”

  Archer sat up painfully on the hard surgical slab as Chancellor M’Rek strode into the medical chamber, flanked by several warriors.

  “Captain Archer,” M’Rek began. “Your tenacity and stubbornness, not to mention your savagery in battle, mark you as a spirit who was probably meant to be a Klingon. The pink, fleshy form that spirit now resides in notwithstanding.”

  Archer tried to smile, and winced at t
he pain in his face, a lingering souvenir of Krell’s attempt to rip his cheek from his skull. “I consider that a great compliment, Chancellor.” He put up a hand to discourage Phlox from approaching. Phlox backed away, lowering his gaze as well as the medical scanner in his hand.

  “Despite your unwillingness to kill your opponent—an outcome we truthfully thought to be impossible to begin with—you have fulfilled your part of our bargain,” M’Rek said.

  “So you’re going to tell me the plain truth about the attacks on Draylax.”

  M’Rek shook his head. “No, I will not. That duty will fall to Admiral Krell.” He turned to regard the Klingon whom Archer had been told was the High Council’s chief physician. “Doctor Kon’Jef, can you rouse Krell long enough for him to perform his duties?”

  Archer thought he saw a look of anger flicker over the doctor’s face, but the man merely nodded. Archer imagined that even a chief physician would think very carefully before daring to defy the wishes of the leader of the Klingon High Council.

  “He has just endured a long and intricate surgical ordeal, Chancellor,” Kon’Jef said. “It will be painful for him, but I believe I can wake him without causing him any permanent harm.”

  “Do it,” M’Rek said. Turning back to Archer, he said, “The evidence that he shows you will not be allowed to leave Qo’noS.”

  “But how am I supposed to convince my superiors that—”

  “That is your problem, Tera’ngan, not mine,” M’Rek said, interrupting him. “Your government expected us to take your word as to its intentions. If your superiors expect us to trust you, then surely they will not mind affording us the same respect.”

  Archer nodded. Whatever I’m about to learn must embarrass the hell out of the Klingons, he thought. Or else they wouldn’t care so much about hard evidence leaking out.

  He could only hope that, as M’Rek had said, his own word would be enough to assuage the suspicions and fears of the decision-makers of the Coalition of Planets.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Taugus III

  TRIP FELT A PALPABLE SENSE of relief when his own eyes finally confirmed that the explosion that had laid waste to Sopek’s hideout hadn’t taken the Scoutship Drolae with it. The blunt-shaped, eight-meter-long vessel remained parked on the same nearly level stretch of rock-strewn hillside where Trip and Terix had left it, some three klicks and change away from the still-burning remains of the dissident compound.

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to fly this thing solo?” Malcolm said, eyeing the gray-green hull of the alien vessel with unconcealed suspicion. Shuttlepod Two cast a long shadow behind him and T’Pol as the late-afternoon sun continued to sink ever lower in the sky behind it. The bloated orb’s orange-refracted rays were painted brown and ocher by the durable but slowly diminishing column of smoke and fire that marked the ruins of Sopek’s base.

  “There’s only one way I can think of to find out,” Trip said with a grin as he slapped the hull with an open palm. “Hell, I’m not even sure I can get the hatch open without Terix’s advance written permission. I just have to hope he left the computer a note.”

  “I take it he wasn’t exactly the trusting sort,” Reed said.

  “We’re talking about a Romulan centurion, Malcolm. Not an eagle scout.” Trip placed his right hand on the recognition pad that was mounted to the immediate right of the forward hatch. The hand-plate was recessed so that it was flush with the rest of the hull when its tough duranium cover was in place.

  To Trip’s relieved surprise, the hatch hissed obediently open two or three heartbeats later.

  “Let’s hope your friend Terix didn’t leave any booby traps active in there,” Malcolm said, his expression grave as he nodded toward the open hatch, through which a few of the scoutship’s faintly glowing instrument panels were visible.

  A swarm of butterflies fluttered in Trip’s gut; he could think of only one way to put that notion to the test as well.

  T’Pol took a couple of steps closer to Trip and the open hatchway before she stopped between the two men and folded her arms before her. “Perhaps the centurion anticipated that he might have no alternative other than to trust you under certain extraordinary circumstances.”

  That sounded reasonable to Trip. It was also far more encouraging than Malcolm’s paranoia, however justified it might be. “I guess he could have told the computer to let me drive if he was too injured to take charge himself. Even if he didn’t trust me completely, he might have figured I’d expect my chances of staying in Valdore’s good graces to suffer if I were to use this ship to run away—or if I came back to Romulus without my escort.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened,” Malcolm said. “How do you intend to explain Terix’s absence to Valdore?”

  Trip stared thoughtfully into the middle distance, gazing with unfocused eyes at the pillar of combustion debris that still rose above the site of his most recent brush with death. Sopek, who had probably escaped the explosion along with some of his people, had also probably left Terix to die in the conflagration. But if Sopek had decided to take Terix along, then both men were surely already very far from here by now; Terix would be a prisoner of a group of dangerous Romulan political dissidents who had managed to spirit him off-planet without leaving any detectable radiation trail to follow.

  “I have no idea, Malcolm,” he said at length. “I’m afraid I’m just going to have to keep making it all up as I go. And I’m going to start by returning to Romulus to check in with Valdore. If I don’t, he’ll think Terix was right in suspecting me of being a spy.”

  “Judging by what you’ve told me, I think Valdore will know you’re a spy soon enough,” Reed said. “That is, if Terix really did survive and somehow finds a way to get a report to him. And that’s assuming that he and Valdore don’t already know a lot more than you think they do.”

  T’Pol nodded. “I agree. Valdore nearly killed both you and Lieutenant Reed once before. It would be a serious mistake to underestimate him now.”

  Trip nodded as he considered T’Pol’s warning. But although he’d never forget how close he and Malcolm had come to dying when they had struggled with Valdore over control of an experimental remote-controlled Romulan drone ship last year, Valdore wasn’t a man Trip could simply run away from.

  “Besides, you don’t have to keep doing this,” Reed said, spreading his hands before him. “I know firsthand how this kind of clandestine work can take over your life if you let it. Maybe you’ve already accomplished enough here. Maybe it’s time you thought about coming in from the cold, so to speak.”

  Coming in from the cold, Trip thought, mesmerized for a moment by that tantalizing thought. Rising from the dead. The notion had occurred to him many times since his Romulan sojourn had begun. But circumstances had always conspired to make the goal of coming home seem as unreachable as the Andromeda Galaxy.

  “I must concur with Lieutenant Reed,” T’Pol said, her dark eyes taking on an almost pleading cast that Trip had seen only rarely; the last time was when Doctor Phlox had worked frantically, though without success, to save the life of their dying baby.

  “Others could take over for you,” she continued. “I ask you again to let us…take you home.” T’Pol gestured toward the crest of a nearby hill, where the trio had carefully set down Shuttlepod Two among piles of gray boulders and short stands of blue-green scrub vegetation.

  Home, Trip thought, not entirely certain he fully recognized the concept anymore.

  “I’m certain Captain Archer could use your help more than ever now,” Reed said. “What with all the trouble between the Klingons and the Draylaxians we’ve been hearing about.”

  “Yeah, I picked up some intel about the Klingon thing just before I left Romulus,” Trip said, stroking his cheek as he mulled his friends’ words over. “I was hoping to find proof that the Romulans were really the ones behind that little problem as well. No such luck.”

  He paused as he realized that he had just r
einforced the very argument his friends were trying to make, though they were probably as dismayed as he was that the Coalition seemed to be facing imminent war on two fronts rather than on just one.

  Tucker came to a firm decision then, arriving there with a certitude that surprised him. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, both of you. But my business here isn’t anywhere near finished yet. I have to stay. Hell, I haven’t even found out for sure what happened to Terix yet.”

  T’Pol raised an eyebrow, clearly incredulous. “Commander, Terix is an enemy who will doubtless try to kill you again the first time he gets the chance. He would surely compromise you, which in Romulan space would effectively be the same thing as executing you.”

  “He’s an enemy, that’s true enough,” Trip said, nodding. “But he’s an enemy I was in the midst of serving with on a mission that was at least as important to the security of the Coalition as it was to the Romulan military. Which sort of makes Terix a comrade, as weird as I know that sounds.

  “I’ve never been in the habit of leaving anyone behind, T’Pol. And I’m sure as hell not gonna start now.”

  “But even if you do manage to find Terix still alive,” Reed said, raising his voice, “you’ll probably have to kill him straightaway, just to maintain your cover. You say you can’t leave a comrade behind, which I assume comes out of your sense of duty. But can you kill him when your duty demands it?”

  Trip didn’t want to think about that at the moment. “There’s still the threat of the Romulan stardrive to consider, Malcolm.”

  “But the Klingons—” Malcolm said.

  Trip interrupted him, determined to protect his resolve against any further assault. “The captain can handle the Klingons, if you guys are both behind him.”