Kobayashi Maru

by Michael A. Martin

  Trip shut off the speaker, then extended his left arm toward the forward window in order to make a decidedly un-Romulan hand gesture. Though he seriously doubted that anyone aboard the other vessel could see it, it still felt damned good. Let’s see how many of you I can vaporize right along with me, he thought as he returned his attention to the console before him and entered a new string of commands.

  A moment later, a small screen before him began displaying the Romulan numerals that denoted the beginning of a final, brief countdown to oblivion.

  Next, he began frantically working the com console, trying to open a channel to somebody, anybody, in either Starfleet or the United Earth government. He estimated he had only a few seconds at best before he was blown out of the sky, and he was determined to put his last moments to the best possible use.

  Your plan all along was to let me almost get away with this, wasn’t it, Terix? You wanted me to see what Valdore was about to do to the Coalition planets. Just as long as I couldn’t actually do a damned thing about it.

  Nothing. No subspace connections. And nothing evidently wrong with the Drolae’s transmitter. The receiver, on the other hand, was suddenly awash in an oceanic wave of pure static.

  He looked up at the approaching ship. He’s jamming me, he thought, despair at last beginning to zero in on him with all the force of a plummeting asteroid. Looks like I’m not getting any warnings out to anybody.

  It occurred to him then that he had parted company with his friends back on Taugus without disabusing them of the idea that the Klingon Empire now constituted the gravest threat to peace in the galactic neighborhood. Now he knew better. The most serious danger the Coalition now faced emanated from Romulus, rather than the Klingon homeworld. And he was the only one who knew this—and the location of the Romulans’ targets—to a bedrock certainty, other than the Romulans themselves. And the forward weapons tubes of the approaching bird-of-prey argued eloquently that the Romulan Empire would soon have the exclusive franchise on that knowledge, no matter what might happen to Charles Anthony Tucker III in the next few moments.

  At least, Trip thought, until after it’s way too late for anybody in the Coalition to do anything about it.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, July 22, 2155

  Columbia NX-02, near Alpha Centauri

  ADMIRAL GARDNER’S NEW ORDERS had arrived only about six hours after Columbia’s repairs were completed; alone in her ready room, Captain Erika Hernandez received them with a heavy sense of fatigue. She knew she wasn’t the only one who was feeling worn out at the moment, either. Like all of Columbia’s alpha-shift bridge personnel, Lieutenant Russell Hexter and his beta-watch crew and Lieutenant Charles Zeilfelder and his gamma-shifters had been working far past their standard shifts for the duration of the repair operations. The double-teaming had put quite a strain on just about everyone.

  Prior to returning to her command chair on the bridge, Hernandez had put in an order with the galley to prep some caffeinated drinks for the alpha-shift bridge crew. Before Ensign Valerian, the com officer, had managed to take her first sip, however, she received a partially garbled distress call from a line of cargo vessels reporting that they had come under attack in the Alpha Centauri system. Coffee and tea were put aside, forgotten and cold, as Columbia’s bridge crew shifted immediately into rescue mode.

  “Any ID yet on the attackers, Sidra?” Hernandez said, turning her command chair toward the communications console. She hoped that another batch of Romulan-commandeered Klingon vessels wouldn’t prove to be the culprits here; that might push a touchy Coalition Council right over the brink of launching a misbegotten war against the Klingon Empire. Give me plain vanilla, garden-variety pirates anyday, she thought.

  “Still no luck on that, Captain,” said Ensign Valerian. “And all I’m getting right now is static. Maybe the attackers are jamming the cargo ships at the source.”

  If they haven’t destroyed them outright already, Hernandez thought, immediately kicking herself for her pessimism.

  Facing front and leaning forward toward the helm, she said, “What’s our ETA at Alpha Centauri?” She knew she probably sounded like a child asking “Are we there yet?” But given her current lack of sleep, as well as her preoccupation with Jonathan Archer’s long-shot attempt to avert a seemingly inevitable war with the Klingons and/or the Romulans, she regarded it as a minor miracle that she sounded even halfway coherent.

  Lieutenant Akagi turned from her station, a slight smile on her lips. “Just a hair under twenty minutes, Captain. Five minutes less than the last time you asked. Would you like me to put a counter on the screen, sir?” she teased, her almond-shaped eyes crinkling at the edges.

  Hernandez gave her a mock scolding look. “No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll try to restrain my enthusiasm until we get there.” She looked over to the front left of the bridge, where Valerian’s hands were a blur at her communications console, while her face showed unhappy concentration.

  “Any luck restoring communications with the convoy, Sidra?” Hernandez asked.

  Valerian shook her head. “No, Captain. I’m picking up snatches and pieces of subspace messages, but nothing I can lock onto for any length of time. The signals are all tremendously fragmented. It’s as if the main ship transceivers are either jammed or destroyed, and the message fragments I’m receiving are being transmitted by private, low-power communication devices carried by shipboard personnel. Most of them appear to be personal messages…. They’re trying to say their good-byes.”

  The thought made Hernandez shiver. If their communications are being jammed, could this be another Romulan stunt? She imagined the cargo vessel crews all trying to defend their ships, even as they used whatever small com devices were on hand to send farewell messages to their loved ones. If that’s the case, then we may already be too late to help anybody.

  She toggled the communicator on her command chair’s arm. “Karl, see if you can pump a bit more power into the engines. Even shaving off a minute or two of travel time might make all the difference.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Captain, but we’re gonna bust our new stitches if you push my little Liebchens very much harder,” Lieutenant Graylock replied, clearly concerned about undoing the just-completed repairs to Columbia’s nacelles and the other recent war wounds she had sustained.

  “All I ask is that you try, Karl,” Hernandez said before signing off.

  “Coming up on fifteen minutes,” Akagi said from her station half an eternity later.

  “Do we have long-range visuals yet?” Hernandez asked.

  At the tactical station, Lieutenant Kiona Thayer shook her head, her long braided hair undulating across her back with the movement. “Not yet, Captain. Even if we did, whatever we saw would already be old news because of the relativistic light-lag. On the bright side, our sensors aren’t currently picking up any subspace signatures consistent with weapons fire. Which could be a good thing.”

  “Or it could mean that the battle’s already been lost,” Hernandez said, feeling glum.

  “Well, aren’t you a bag of oranges and morning sunshine?” Commander Veronica Fletcher said in her lilting New Zealand accent as she exited the turbolift and strode purposefully to her traditional spot at the engineering console to Hernandez’s right.

  “Only if they’re fully pulped oranges,” Hernandez said tartly in response. Her answer made her think of poor Jonathan Archer, who really looked like a bag of pulped fruit after his fight on Qo’noS. She was glad she hadn’t been on Enterprise when Archer had returned, or she would have had to battle the temptation to take care of him. He always has had that effect on me, she thought, even though she never doubted for a moment that her instinct to protect Columbia and her crew would have overruled the impulse. Of course, she couldn’t deny that she’d found the current hotheaded, secretive version of Jon Archer far less attractive than the man she once might have married. So much about the man had changed over the past few years. Particular
ly since the death of Trip Tucker.

  Hernandez got a status update from Chief Engineer Graylock on several belowdecks repairs and retrofits that had just been completed, including some system redundancies that could act as extra computer firewalls that had been put into place after Archer’s warning about the new weapon the Romulans were using.

  A hand signal from Akagi told Hernandez that only a few minutes remained before Columbia was due to drop out of warp in the outer Alpha Centauri system.

  “All right, everyone, we’re on tactical alert,” Hernandez said. Once the bridge illumination had dimmed to combat levels, she continued: “We already know that the cargo fleet is under attack, so I want us coming in locked and loaded for bear. I know you’ve all been briefed already, but let me remind you that the hostile we are about to encounter may be either Klingon or Romulan ships. Either way, we’re going to target their weapons and propulsion wherever possible. I want to capture one of these bastards, if the opportunity arises. If it doesn’t, we’ll do whatever we have to do.” She looked toward Fletcher, nodding slightly at her executive officer.

  “If we end up facing Klingon battle cruisers, keep in mind that their crews may not be in control of their own helms and weapons,” Fletcher said, effortlessly picking up where Hernandez had left off. “And if they aren’t really the ones running their own control panels, then it’s likely that they won’t return our hails. If the hostile vessels really are being controlled remotely, then their tactical maneuvers might be a bit more sluggish than you might expect. But don’t bet the farm on that in the absence of hard information. Until we actually engage the aggressors, I want every sensor focused on telling us whether or not the hostile vessels’ crews are actively piloting their ships, or if they might just be along for the ride, so to speak.”

  “Two minutes, Captain,” Akagi said.

  “Arm phase cannons. Load and arm torpedoes,” Hernandez said, settling back firmly into her chair. “The moment we exit warp, charge the hull plating. Ensign Valerian, open a broad-band hailing channel as soon as we go sublight.”

  “Major Foyle reports that his full MACO complement is standing by if we need them,” Fletcher said. “They’re also deployed near all emergency containment areas, and ready with pressure suits, just in case.”

  “Thank you,” Hernandez said. “Helm, take us out of warp as close as you can to the line of scrimmage. We want the element of surprise on our side.”

  The deck plates shuddered beneath Hernandez’s boots, and Columbia’s entire spaceframe groaned in a familiar yet still disconcerting manner. The main viewscreen at the front of the bridge showed the distorted streaks of the stars aligned with the ship’s flightline compressing to almost dimensionless pinpoints as Columbia abruptly decelerated to subluminal speeds.

  Squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw, Hernandez looked directly toward the screen’s center, knowing the viewer would pick her image up in the same manner as any other audio/visual hail. “This is Captain Erika Hernandez of the United Earth Starship Columbia. We are responding to acts of aggression against cargo vessels under the protection of the Coalition of Planets. All aggressor vessels must stand down and submit to boarding. Any resistance will be considered an act of aggression, and will be met with deadly force. Hostile vessels, this is the only warning you will receive.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Hernandez saw Lieutenant Commander el-Rashad turn toward her from his science station, a gobsmacked expression on his chiseled, mocha-colored features.

  The reason for his reaction appeared on the main viewscreen a moment later. The visual sensors displayed what lay in Columbia’s path. The aggressor vessels and the cargo fleet they menaced came into sharp focus, and it was immediately clear that the attackers were of neither Klingon nor Romulan design. Nor was their identity a mystery; the attackers’ long, blunt-nosed central hulls, with each of their aft sections surrounded by a single wide, ring-shaped warp-propulsion module, were all too familiar to everyone present.

  “Vulcans? Why would—” Hernandez said under her breath, scarcely able to contain her incredulity.

  “Captain, sensors confirm the presence of two D’Kyr-type Vulcan combat cruisers,” Thayer said from her tactical station. “Particle-beam residue readings show that they are the aggressors here. Should I hold fire?”

  Hernandez stood, raising her hand to signal restraint. “Yes. Hold fire. What the hell are they doing?” Her mind galloped to find an explanation, but the longer she stared at the image, the more insane it seemed.

  “They’re not responding to hails, Captain,” Valerian said.

  Hernandez continued staring at the vista on the screen, trying to drink in every detail. The beleaguered convoy consisted of five cargo vessels, many of them already severely damaged. One seemed completely beyond salvaging, as plasma fires burned on what little remained of its outer hull, apparently fed by atmosphere that continued to escape from interior compartments. The cargo vessels almost seemed to cower in the presence of the Vulcan ships that appeared to have instigated the entire situation.

  “One of the ships is charging up its weapons again!” Thayer shouted. On the viewer, Hernandez watched as the forward particle-beam tube on the ship nearest to Columbia began to emit a baleful emerald glow.

  “Charge hull plating to full!” Hernandez shouted.

  “Their weapons lock isn’t focused on us, Captain,” Fletcher said.

  A moment later, a brilliant green beam shot forth from the underbelly of the Vulcan cruiser, lancing into the hull of one of the more heavily damaged cargo ships. Almost immediately, the wounded vessel exploded, sending an expanding cloud of metal debris and ignited gases into space. The effect reminded Hernandez of a Fourth of July fireworks display she’d seen as a child, though her mood at the moment was anything but celebratory.

  “Have they responded to our hails yet?”

  “No, sir,” Valerian said.

  “Try to disable the lead vessel,” Hernandez ordered, hoping that she hadn’t just made the mistake of her career.

  “The second ship is charging weapons and targeting us,” Thayer shouted before she’d managed to fire her first shot.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Hernandez returned to her chair, strapping herself in place as her crew got to work.

  As Columbia lurched and vibrated in response to Hernandez’s demands, the captain studied the viewscreen, which showed several of Thayer’s phase cannon blasts making contact with one of the D’Kyr-type cruisers. The concentrated energy bursts seemed to warm the greenish hull up a bit, while a photonic torpedo exploded against the cruiser’s underbelly without doing any apparent harm.

  “Incoming!”

  Hernandez felt her ship shudder for a moment as one of the Vulcan vessels returned fire, and the lights on the bridge—already crimson-hued from the moment Columbia had gone to full tactical alert—flickered and dimmed significantly.

  “Status?” she yelled.

  “Hull plating is down to eighty percent,” Thayer said.

  “Fire at will, Lieutenant,” Hernandez shouted to the tactical officer. She tapped the com unit on her chair. “Karl, we need that hull plating at full.”

  “I’m working on it,” Graylock said, sounding testy.

  “Firing!” Thayer said, and the viewscreen showed that Columbia was swooping over what appeared to be the dorsal surface of one of the combat cruisers. This time, a full spread of Columbia’s photonic torpedoes struck the warp ring of the ship, resulting in a blazing arc of bluish energy that crackled around the surface of the ring.

  “Bring us about for another salvo,” Hernandez said.

  “They’re targeting another one of the cargo ships,” Fletcher said.

  “Get us between the Vulcans and the cargo fleet,” Hernandez said. “Our hull plating can take the pounding better than theirs can.” She didn’t add the words “I hope” out loud, though she felt certain she wasn’t the only one on the bridge thinking them.

  “Both Vulcan
ships are opening fire!” Thayer said.

  “I need every last amp of power you can send to the hull plating, Karl,” Hernandez shouted into her com unit.

  Perhaps a second later, Columbia shuddered and jumped as though she’d been struck by the fist of some angry god. The sharp impact threw Hernandez from her chair. Above her head, the hull rang like a gong, and the bridge abruptly plunged into darkness. She heard several screams and thumps from across the bridge, and saw showers of sparks as various duty stations overloaded.

  The continued illumination from the console fires showed that most of her bridge crew had either been thrown from their posts or had barely managed to hang on to them. Luckily, no one seemed to have been seriously hurt.

  Fletcher and el-Rashad were the first to break out the emergency hand beacons and fire extinguishers, which they immediately brought to bear against the worst of the electrical fires. The emergency lighting finally kicked on as the crew attempted to access Columbia’s almost uniformly downed systems. The drinks, which had remained mostly untouched after their arrival, had become airborne momentarily, and the emptied cups now rolled in the liquids that had pooled across part of the deck’s port side, where cups and contents alike now lay forgotten.

  “Systems are down shipwide,” Akagi said, an apprehensive tremor in her voice.

  That fact alone didn’t tell Hernandez very much of value. “I need to know how badly we’ve been damag—”

  “Internal communications coming back online now, Captain,” Valerian said, interrupting.

  The com system crackled, and the chief engineer’s Teutonic-accented voice issued from it. “Captain? Whatever they hit us with really fubared us. The warp core is kaput, at least temporarily. It’ll take us several hours to fix it, even if the rest of the systems were working fine. Which they aren’t.”

  So much for the repairs we just completed, Hernandez thought ruefully. She stared at the main viewscreen, which had yet to return to life. “Are they targeting us again?” Hernandez asked, hoping the bridge’s interval of blindness would be a brief one.