ENT - 012 - Kobayashi Maru

THIRTY-SIX

Romulan Scoutship DrolaeNear Romulus

A S THE OVERSTRAINED LITTLE SHIPobediently transitioned from nearly warp six to a relatively sluggish warp two, Trip breathed a new prayer of thanks to any deity who might be monitoring such things anywhere in the vast empty spaces between Romulus and Earth. He was grateful not only that the vessel around him had successfully endured yet another brutal bout of rapid acceleration and decelerationnot to mention the sustained hard use it had suffered in between those extremesbut also for the simple fact that, as one of Trips automotive-engineer ancestors might have put it, Centurion Terix had apparently left his keys in the scout vessels ignition, so to speak.

That simple, unaccountable fact also proved to be a source of nagging disquiet from the moment Trip had left the Taugus system until now, when Romulus was already becoming visible on the long-range sensors as a small but brightly shining cerulean bauble, locked in a perpetual gravitational dance with the ruddy wasteland of Remus, an ugly, blotchy orb that appeared to be perched on the blue planets shoulder like some grimly vigilant gargoyle.

Despite his relatively trouble-free passage to Romulus thus far, Trip still continued to worry that Terix had set some sort of elaborate trap for himone whose jaws still had yet to spring shut on him. Talk about paranoid,he thought. All Terix had to do was rig the warp core to lose containment once I started accessing the helm station. He really didnt need to set any traps more complicated than that.

But he still had his nagging doubts. For one thing, it just wasnt like Terix, a man who clearly did not give his trust easily, to be so sloppy. But not only had the Scoutship Drolaeapparently notbeen rigged to explode in the absence of a special surreptitious abort code, the sturdy little vessels com system had actually allowed him to maintain constant surveillance over the subspace frequencies being used by the Romulan fleet, apparently thanks to Terixs simple failure to log off of the com console just prior to disembarking for the Taugus raid.

But most fortunate of allnot to mention most suspicious of allwas the fact that this blunder had left Trip with access to many of the fleets highest-security channels.

As he initiated his sublight approach to the steadily growing sapphire planet, rehearsing the verbal report he would make to Valdore all the way, some of the chatter he was hearing on the secure com channels began to both intrigue and frighten him. For starters, the Romulan fleets technology division appeared to have just made an unspecified but apparently significant breakthrough in following up on the late Doctor Ehrehins warp-seven stardrive research.

Trip wasnt at all sure what that meantlet alone how they had managed it without Ehrehinif the news turned out to be anything other than a hopeful rumor. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later,he thought. After all, somebody else would have built the first airplane back in the early twentieth century if Orville and Wilbur had decided to throw in the towel early.

The other messages he intercepted soon afterward began to chill him to the depths of his soul. Disciplined-sounding voices familiar to anyone with military training, regardless of language, had begun speaking in clipped, determined phrases of fleet movements. Largefleet movements, which were being discussed only on what Trip had identified as the highest-security channels to which he had access. All of the fleet movements were apparently covert.

And all of them were headed away from Romulan space, proceeding in the general direction of the core Coalition worlds.

Two specific destinations, which he assumed were Romulan place names for Coalition locations, had already recurred frequently enough to draw Trips attention. Isneih, Seichi.He hadnt heard either name before, so he couldnt translate them readily into their English equivalents. But he imagined those places wouldnt be hard to locate using the data files on the Drolaes nav computer. After activating the autopilot, he immediately set about doing just that.

Isneih. A supermassive white star located about nineteen light-years from another marker, which Trip had already designated as Earths solar system.

Trips heart raced as he compared his own mental star map to the one displayed on the nav console. The Calder system,he thought, his spine chilled as though suddenly exposed to a total vacuum. Thats getting a little too close to Andoria and Vulcan for comfort.

With Calder pinned down on the map, it took only another few moments to locate the Romulan fleets other frequently mentioned objective: Seichi.

His stomach abruptly went into freefall. Alpha Centauri. Only a bit more than four light-years from Earth.

A proximity alarm interrupted Trips grim musings, forcing his attention back up to the forward windows. The space in front of them was quickly growing very crowded, and not merely because the Drolaewas fast approaching Romulus.

A flat, horseshoe-crab-shaped Romulan bird-of-prey had just dropped out of warp directly between him and the looming planet. The rapidly approaching vessel was oriented so that the glare of Eisn, the bright yellow sun around which Romulus and Remus orbited, provided garish illumination to its ventral hull, which displayed the bright red plumage of a predatory bird.

Without warning, a disruptor beam lashed out from the warbird, scoring a direct hit that rocked the little scoutship and rang her hull like a colossal clapper striking an outsize cathedral bell. Fortunately, Trips flight harness kept him from being flung from the pilots seat.

He engaged the throttle, and wasnt a bit surprised when the warp drive failed to engage.

Swell. Terix, you sadistic bastard. You really did plan this all along, didnt you?Trip felt physically pinned down, as though hed just been literally caught in the steel jaws of a bear trap.

But he knew that even a trapped animal was anything but helpless. Few creatures were more dangerous than a wounded bear, after all, and Trip understood that he wasnt entirely out of options, trapped or not. He began entering commands into his partially disabled engineering console, beginning by punching up the fuel-containment subsystem.

His com console light flashed, signaling an incoming hail. A harsh male voice came over the speaker. “Scout vesselDrolae. You will heave to and deactivate your weapons. Prepare to be boarded, or vaporized.

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. Lets 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 mealmost get away with this, wasnt it, Terix? Youwanted me to see what Valdore was about to do to the Coalition planets. Just as long as I couldnt actually do a damned thing about it.

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

He looked up at the approaching ship. Hes jamming me,he thought, despair at last beginning to zero in on him with all the force of a plummeting asteroid. Looks like Im 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. Nowhe 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 thisand the location of the Romulans targetsto 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 its way too late for anybody in the Coalition to do anything about it.