Kobayashi Maru

by Michael A. Martin

  But if Stiles were to learn that the Vulcans aboard the Kobayashi Maru were headed for a stable cometary body in the Tezel-Oroko system’s Kuiper belt, where they intended to fortify and expand a small, covert listening post whose electronic ears and eyes were aimed at both the Romulans and the Klingons, he would probably go ballistic. Vance didn’t much care about the galactic politics involved, though he knew he would prefer that the stodgy Vulcans have the upper hand over either the Klingons or the Romulans; from what little he’d seen, both empires were far too capriciously aggressive to suit a free spirit like Captain Kojiro Vance.

  But Vance felt confident that his crew would forget whatever the Vulcans were up to here within a few short days, once the Maru was engaged in another cargo run to some other, less perilously located world. Even Stiles would no doubt forgive all, should he ever discover the truth, once he received his share of the handsome profit the current Gamma Hydra run had already generated.

  Vance selected a slimming, dark purple set of breeches and a full-sleeved maroon shirt. He held them up against himself and noted with pleasure how nicely they complemented his straight black hair and olive-gold skin.

  “Are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, Vance?” Searles asked.

  Vance turned, suddenly remembering the presence of the engineer in his room, and regarded her with a smile he hoped she would consider charming. “Of course, Jackie. You were chattering on again, something about not liking the technology we’re carrying for the Vulcans.”

  Searles balled her hands up into clawed fists and growled, clearly exasperated. “Essentially, yes, that is what I was saying. The Vulcans keep quote helping unquote my engineering staff with quote multiple system upgrades unquote, but it seems to me that all they’re doing is further screwing up our already overtaxed systems. Yes, we’re heading toward our destination faster, but the warp core is running wicked hot, Vance. And we’re having a lot of system glitches as well. Plus, the stuff in the Vulcans’ shipping crates may be the source of the strange, low-level radiation my people have been picking up on the internal scanners. It’s making everyone very uncomfortable.”

  Vance frowned as he pulled the stitching at the waist of his pirate breeches tight, making sure not to catch anything important in the loops as he cinched them tighter. “Why would this radiation you’re picking up necessarily have anything to do with the Vulcans or their matériel? I love her like I love myself, but the Maru is always springing a leak in some system or other. I mean no offense to your skills, Jackie, but the old girl is perpetually in need of some repair or other.” He paused, then added with a flourish, “Unlike myself.”

  “I just want…” Searles frowned, seemingly searching very hard for the right words. “Can you just keep the Vulcans out of my engine room, please?”

  “All right,” Vance said, pulling the shirt on over his head. The satin felt smooth against his skin, luxurious. “I’ll ask them to stay away. As long as you keep things running smoothly and make sure we get there in record time.”

  He crossed back to the bed, where he laid a hand on the sleeping Orana’s rump. “I notice that you seemed to favor this sight more than my own impressive Davidesque nakedness. Would you like a quick taste, my dear, to make the more prosaic chores of the rest of your day more bearable? I must say, it’s done wonders for me.”

  Searles extended her right hand toward him, middle finger defiantly raised, even as she turned and slammed her other hand into the wall-mounted hatch-control mechanism.

  As the door slid open and she stalked out of the room, Vance chuckled quietly. What a waste of a perfectly good offer, he thought. It would have been fun to watch, if nothing else.

  After all, one of the benefits of being master and commander of the Kobayashi Maru was that the position afforded him the means of enjoying life to its fullest—so long as nothing interrupted the incoming revenue stream, and naysayers like Stiles and Searles didn’t keep the Maru in dry dock rather than out among the stars, earning more of the stuff that made life worth living. And enjoying life was something Kojiro Vance intended to go right on doing.

  No matter who came out on top in the Vulcans’ clandestine struggle against the Romulans and the Klingons for the reins of galactic power.

  FORTY

  Romulan Scoutship Drolae

  EFFECTIVELY OUT OF OPTIONS, Trip could think of little to do other than to continue staring out the forward window at the angry glow of the approaching bird-of-prey’s main disruptor tube. Only occasionally did he allow his gaze to flick momentarily down to his engineering displays.

  The relentless downward progression of Romulan numeric pictographs on the console put him in mind of an hourglass whose sands had all but run out. Whether incoming Romulan disruptor fire killed him, or the sudden, explosive release of the mutually annihilative particles that powered the crippled scout vessel, he knew he would soon be very dead.

  Dead for real this time, with no fakery involved.

  Good thing T’Pol and I got to say good-bye properly instead of just doing that hand-jive the Vulcans do, he thought.

  A disruptor pistol lay in his lap, against the remote possibility that the Romulans might somehow detect and undo his attempt to scuttle the Drolae prior to boarding her. He wished he’d taken a phase pistol from Shuttlepod Two—he far preferred a weapon with a stun setting—but he couldn’t risk allowing an Earth weapon to fall into Romulan hands, which was almost certain to happen once the Drolae was boarded. But so far, he’d seen no evidence that the warship out there was attempting either to transmit helm override signals or to send over a boarding team.

  Just as the countdown entered its final minute, Trip suddenly noticed a tingling sensation that made him imagine thousands of overly caffeinated ants running frantically all over his skin. In the same instant, a shimmering curtain of light revealed the cause of the weird sensation.

  Transporter beam. Damn it!

  The cockpit of the Drolae swiftly vanished around him, to be replaced a few heartbeats later by the cold greenish metal walls of a narrow, utilitarian chamber. Trip fell with a hard thump to the unyielding surface beneath him, the contoured pilot’s chair that had been supporting his weight evidently having remained aboard the scoutship. As he scrambled to reach the disruptor that had transported with him, a pair of grim-faced Romulan uhlans, both brandishing gleaming disruptor pistols of their own, stepped quickly up onto the small circular stage upon which Trip had just materialized.

  “I suppose you’re gonna take me to your leader now,” Trip said as the guards flanked him, kicked his weapon out of reach, and hauled him roughly to his feet. The only response the unsmiling pair made was to hold his arms behind his back as they shoved him toward an open hatchway.

  Trip worried he might suffer a dislocated shoulder as they frog-marched him along the narrow curve of a conduit-lined accessway. A seeming eternity later, they pushed him into another chamber not much wider than the room in which Trip had materialized.

  Trip immediately sized up the cramped but roughly circular place as the bridge. The chamber was built around a central pillar that served as an anchor for a compact array of consoles and viewers that faced outward to a ring of similar equipment that lined the curved walls. A handful of purposeful-looking Romulan military officers were distributed around various control stations, occupied with the familiar moment-to-moment business of keeping a starship flying.

  Trip looked toward the back of the command chair that was positioned just forward of the room’s central pillar. A male Romulan officer sat there, as still as a marble sculpture, perhaps transfixed by the large forward viewer before him. The screen displayed an image of the Drolae, adrift and broken. Rode hard and put away wet, Trip thought, grateful that the battered little ship hadn’t given up the ghost at an earlier, less opportune time.

  “The scout vessel’s warp-core pressure is still heading toward critical, Commander,” said a young woman who was posted at one of the portside consoles.
<
br />   The captain, who still faced away from Trip, nodded. “Retreat to a safe distance, Decurion.”

  I know that voice, Trip thought, startled.

  A moment later the image of the Drolae vanished, replaced first by a brilliant if short-lived bloom of orange molecular fire, which quickly gave way to a rapidly expanding sphere of sun-dappled metal shards. Within a few seconds, the debris cloud grew nearly as diffuse as the vacuum surrounding it. The Drolae disappeared, as though it had never existed in the first place.

  “Put us back on our original course,” the captain said, still staring straight ahead.

  “Yes, Commander,” said the young male officer who was posted at what Trip assumed to be the helm panel. The star field displayed on the viewer smeared into multicolored streaks as the warp drive engaged. The subaural vibrations transmitted into Trip’s boots via the deck plates increased sharply in frequency, marking the vessel’s quick transition from station-keeping velocity to warp five or thereabouts. And the brief sensation of lateral acceleration Trip felt before the inertial dampers fully engaged told him that they were headed away from Romulus.

  Trip could barely contain his astonishment. They’re not going to take me the rest of the way to Romulus? This is definitely not going according to Hoyle.

  When the man seated at the room’s center turned his chair toward the bridge’s aft section, Trip finally had an inkling as to why.

  He also had about a thousand new questions.

  “Take the prisoner to my office,” the captain said, apparently in anticipation of those very questions.

  “Sopek!” Trip said after the guards had finally left him alone with the man in charge.

  “I prefer Ch’uihv, if you please, Commander Tucker,” said the erstwhile Vulcan captain. “At least while I’m operating in Romulan space.”

  Trip sat heavily in the chair that his captor had offered, gently flexing his sore, badly manhandled shoulders. “This galaxy is getting way too small,” he said, his mind still reeling.

  “You are no doubt referring to the apparent element of coincidence underlying our present meeting,” the other man said, steepling his fingers before him and planting his elbows atop the small transparent desk behind which he had seated himself. “But people in our profession are frequently drawn together by common circumstances, Commander. Particularly when their mission objectives overlap as much as ours do.”

  Trip knew that even if he lived to be a hundred, he would never rid himself of a few truly ghastly memories. One such indelible recollection was the swath of indiscriminate devastation that an experimental Xindi particle weapon had wrought upon his Florida hometown, where his little sister Lizzie had died a little over two years ago.

  Another equally ineradicable mark on his psyche was the image of Sopek, or Ch’uihv, murdering Trip’s original bureau partner, Tinh Hoc Phuong, in cold blood. With a single disruptor blast, Sopek had reduced a brave but helpless human being into a smoldering pile of ash and gristle.

  “What the hell makes you think you and I have anything in common?” Trip said, glowering.

  Either unaware of or unconcerned by Trip’s hostility, the other man said, “I know that you are conducting espionage on behalf of the Coalition of Planets. I am conducting similar operations under the auspices of the principal intelligence agency of one of the founding members of that body: Vulcan.”

  Trip frowned, incredulous. “You work for the Vulcan Security Directorate?”

  “I have been a V’Shar agent for many years,” the older man said, nodding. “Among my numerous ongoing directives is the task of continuously monitoring the evolution of the Romulan Star Empire’s military posture in order to accurately assess its threat potential to Vulcan. To perform these duties successfully, I must keep certain key individuals within the Empire convinced that I am, in fact, a loyal Romulan. Simultaneously, others must believe that I am leading an insurgency of sorts against the Romulan military.”

  Trip involuntarily displayed his teeth. “So which of those audiences were you playing to when you murdered Tinh Phuong?”

  The man on the other side of the desk released a sigh, an almost haunted expression momentarily displacing his usually dour demeanor.

  “Suppose I were to tell you that the V’Shar had obtained proof that Mister Phuong had become a grave threat to Vulcan security?” he said at length. “His death may well have saved a hundred other lives, both on Vulcan and elsewhere in the Coalition.”

  “That’s a damned convenient charge for you to make,” Trip said, “especially now that Phuong’s not around anymore to defend himself. I suppose I should expect you to pass that same sort of judgment on me now that I know way more about you than you ever wanted me to. Unless Valdore catches up to this ship in the meantime and serves up a little fire and brimstone to the both of us, that is.”

  “I assure you, Commander, that I have taken great care to remain several steps ahead of Admiral Valdore,” Sopek/Ch’uihv said. “Particularly after the…unpleasantness you and I experienced on Rator II.”

  Anger and astonishment wrestled one another to a standstill within Trip’s chest; whatever “unpleasantness” the dissident leader had endured while fleeing from Valdore’s assault force, what Phuong had suffered was infinitely worse.

  Easy, Charles, he told himself. Calm down. Try to make it look like you were born with these ears, even if this guy really knows better.

  “How do I know you’re not secretly working for Valdore?” he said aloud. Making a broad gesture that encompassed the entire small office chamber, he added, “After all, it can’t be easy to pinch a bird-of-prey right out from under the admiral’s nose.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Sopek/Ch’uihv said. “It was extraordinarily difficult, in fact. But we had an advantage of which Valdore is unaware.”

  “And that is?”

  Sopek/Ch’uihv leaned forward, the fingers of both hands interlaced atop his desk. “Some of my Ejhoi Ormiin compatriots recently learned about a secret Romulan military weapon capable of usurping the command and control computers of Vulcan vessels. This weapon may also be able to usurp the technology of other Coalition worlds as well, which is why I have decided to share this knowledge with you.”

  Huh, Trip thought. So he’s not gonna kill me. I think.

  The other man continued: “My people applied what knowledge we could gain of the principles behind this new weapon to the task of liberating this vessel”—he paused to gesture broadly at the walls that surrounded them—“from a repair dock located in the Taugus sector.”

  This ship would have come in really handy when he needed to make his quick vanishing act from Taugus III, Trip thought. And it also probably explains those sensor ghosts T’Pol and I saw when we were on the shuttlepod.

  It occurred to Trip then that one very prominent loose end remained from that incident. “What did you do with Terix?” he asked.

  “The centurion who accompanied you to Taugus III,” the other man said, his expression emotionless even by Trip’s notions of Vulcan standards.

  Trip did what he could to restrain his impatience. “Yeah. Him.”

  “Unfortunately, Centurion Terix…succumbed during debriefing.”

  Debriefing, Trip thought, parsing the gentle euphemism for its real, less benign meaning. Interrogation. Terix might have been an adversary, but he didn’t deserve to die screaming on the rack.

  “So when are you going to bring the thumbscrews out for me?” Trip said.

  Sopek/Ch’uihv favored him with a blank, bewildered stare. “Excuse me, Commander?”

  “Whether you’re working for Valdore or the Ejhoi Ormiin or the Vulcan Spook Bureau—or all three at once—I can’t see you just letting me go without first trying to pick my brain the way you picked Terix’s.”

  A look of dawning understanding crossed the enigmatic man’s face. “Ah. You were expecting a thorough and coercive interrogation. Under normal circumstances, I would not hesitate to do just that to anyone who has
been such a close associate of the late Doctor Ehrehin. However, I have agreed to forgo that—and to do what I can to keep you from falling into Valdore’s hands.”

  Trip ran a hand over his frown-crumpled brow, and nearly recoiled from the highly corrugated texture of his artificial forehead ridge. Jeez. My great-granddaddy could have scrubbed his overalls on this thing.

  “Why?” he said aloud.

  “It is a personal favor to an associate of mine on Vulcan.”

  That didn’t tell Trip nearly enough. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Someone with whom you share a close mutual friend, Commander,” Sopek/Ch’uihv said.

  Someone in the spy trade on Vulcan is saving my bacon? Trip thought, astonished. Although he had no idea for whom the other man was doing favors, he felt certain he knew the identity of the “close mutual friend” he had in common with this unnamed individual.

  T’Pol.

  That woman’s determined to go right on trying to rescue me, one way or another, Trip thought, his feelings of helplessness and frustration threatening to boil over. Whether I’ve asked for her help or not.

  “You are an extremely fortunate individual, Commander Tucker,” said the Vulcan double agent. “You have cheated death more times than any other man I have ever encountered.”

  Trip shrugged, feeling worse rather than better despite the compliment. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of control over his destiny over the past few weeks; he was getting damned tired of being able to do little more than merely react to events as they happened.

  “If everything you’ve just told me is true, then my luck wasn’t good for much more than pure survival,” he said. “After all, it didn’t let me get wind of Valdore’s…remote hijacking system until after you did. And if this thing actually works, it could be at least as dangerous as anything else I’ve uncovered in Romulan space so far.”